


Lines in the Sand

by Jacobi



Category: Captain America, Stucky - Fandom
Genre: Anxiety, BAMF Natasha, F/M, M/M, PTSD, Recovery, There’s a dog, Tony Needs a Hug, asexual character w actual character development, father figure steve, mentions of past violence, prewar stucky (some)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 02:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 49,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14607750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacobi/pseuds/Jacobi
Summary: "What the hell, Buck." Steve sighed, squinting over the hills of Arlington. "Where'd you go, you fucker? I loved you, jerk. So where did you go?"Only the birds answered.In Russia, the soldier stirred in his tank.——————Okay so I played around with the timeline and basically it’s a lot of the domesticity in which Steve ends up taking on the role of raising Tony and there’s a dog





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so for some reason the italics feature is glitching for me but I wanted to go ahead and get the content out so here’s that and hopefully at a later date I can clean up the styling. Hope everyone enjoys!

  The best type of peanut butter sandwiches were the ones with the insides coming out all goopy and sticky salty sweet. Bucky swore by it. Steve didn't like the way the jelly got all over his hands and the peanut butter got stuck to the roof of his mouth, so he always tried to politely decline when Bucky offered to make him a sandwich.

 

  Bucky's family wasn't rich, but they weren't like Steve and his Ma. Bucky had two parents and three sisters and food always seemed to appear one way or the other. It was lucky that nobody was especially big in the Barnes family. Bucky was always colossal to Steve, but when he lined up next to Jack from next door, he wasn't so tall anymore.

 

  What made Bucky big were his shoulders. He was built like a tank, broad and compact. He certainly made the racket of one too.

 

  Steve gravitated to Bucky's broadness like a moon pulled into orbit. Most people did. Steve only looked like sunshine; Bucky was the sun. He ran hot, always, except for his temper that never really flared unless Steve was getting beat up on or one of his kid sisters was being especially annoying. But he was a helluva patient guy, as good as he could be coming from street mischief and a shanty Irish background.

 

  "I'm gonna be a fireman." Bucky decided as he sat next to Steve on the fire escape one summer. His sister Claire shimmied out the window and slipped into what little space was left.

 

  "I'm going to college." She said.

 

  Bucky laughed. "Okay." He said. "So is Becca. Maybe you can all go together."

 

  "No, you come with us." Claire insisted.

 

  Sitting there up like pigeons on a telegraph wire, they knew it wasn't ever going to happen. Steve figured Bucky's family would sooner get Claire a horse than be able to send four kids to college.

 

  "Nah," Bucky said, "I'm gonna work for the state, save up some money so you can go. You're smarter than me anyhow."

 

  And that wasn't true. Bucky was real smart in the way that it sort of took Steve aback sometimes. You wouldn't ever know it just by looking at him, but Bucky kept a lot of things up and away in his brain and behind his eyes that he never forgot.

 

  "Do you want to go to college?" Steve asked later.

 

  Bucky chewed on his answer. "Not... not so bad that it would take away from my sisters, Steve. Not so bad as that."

 

  "It's expensive." Steve nodded, not fully understanding.

 

  "No, not like that." Bucky looked him dead in the eye. "They're girls, pal. Ain't no way they can get out unless they get educated. So I don't want to go to college so bad that it pushes them down. I figure they're gonna be knocked down by men their whole lives and I don't gotta contribute to that."

 

  Later, Bucky knew about Becca going to college. He and Steve put up half the tuition because Bucky cared about it that much and Steve loved Bucky enough.

 

Claire was in the wings to go to College about the time that Bucky fell into the ravine, and Alice was young enough that Steve was under ice before she took off to change her world.

 

If anything, Steve thought, there was comfort in those girls getting to college. There was closure. If anything, Bucky would have been so damned proud. Steve knew he was proud of them himself, even though he was so damned sad just the same. Steve wondered, sometimes, if Bucky'd known he wasn't coming back from the war.

 

"All your records say you never got a dime of your pay baring meal tickets, pal," Steve toed away a weed crawling up the side of Bucky's grave stone that guarded an empty coffin. That was the great mystery of it all, the unspoken, cavernous what happened to you? "All of that money went into an education fund for your sisters. Not a dime to you or your parents or anyone else. What happened to you, anyway, huh? Were you too kind for the war? Huh? What happened to you when you fell, is your body still there under the snow?"

 

It was mystifying. Because Steve had gone and looked. He'd gone and he swore there was a scrap of blue cloth from Bucky's quilted coat that he loved so much frozen there in the snow. Steve still had that little scrap of fabric. But Bucky's body had disappeared. What happened to you? Where did you go?

 

  Bucky had been there- smiling, laughing, crying, screaming. He'd been there- kicking, spitting, teasing, hugging. He had been there. And then he was just. Gone. He was just gone. There and then gone, blinked out of existence. Steve's best friend had been there, growing up right along side him, and then some weird shit had happened in the war and he was suddenly and inexplicably gone for good. It wasn't like the death of Steve's Ma. That had been slow and painful, but at least there had been time to say good bye.

 

  Bucky's death was surprising. They all thought nothing could touch them, stupid boys in a war of men and magic and Bucky had paid the price and disappeared along with his body, leaving a giant space at Steve's six.

 

  "What the hell, Buck." Steve sighed, squinting over the hills of Arlington. "Where'd you go, you fucker? I loved you, jerk. So where did you go?"

 

  Only the birds answered.

 

  "I hope you're at peace. I hope you. Well. I hope you know Alice is a goddamned doctor and never changed her last name because of you. I hope you know her little boy looks so much like you at that age it makes me startled sometimes. I hope you're not cold. But what the hell pal, where did you even go?"

 

  In Russia, the Soldier stirred in his tank.

 

  In America, Steve Rogers got back on his motorcycle and cruised through the streets to the VA, where he was met by Sam Wilson.

 

  "Hey man," Paired with a brilliant, gap toothed smile. Steve was always finding bits of Bucky in the strangest places, as if his old friend were saying _here, I'm right here, pal, see? I never left you, I'm here and here and here and here._ "The vets are just about over the moon that you're volunteering for art day."

 

  In the corner next to a big window, one of the vets was painting the beach. "You know," Steve said, "I've only ever been to the beach at Coney Island."

 

  She looked up at him, a bemused look on her face. "That's a sorry way to live there, Mr Captain America. Don't you ever do anything for fun besides chewing on injustice?" See, pal? I'm right here, I never left

 

  "Oh, sure. I quite enjoy knocking Hitler out. You been there a lot?" Steve motioned to the painting.

 

  The vet smiled in a soft sort of way. "No, this isn't any place in particular. It's just. My wingman died in Qatar, shot through the open space in the helicopter just like that. Gone as suddenly as waves washing out lines in the sand. You think you've given death all of these boundaries- 'you can't touch this, I love it too much'. You know, like you're a kid building sandcastles and you don't know how close the tide really is. But the waves come anyway, and death comes anyway."

 

  Steve nodded slowly. "Like lines in the sand." He repeated.

 

  In Russia, the Soldier stirred again.


	2. Lemon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If I get a dog, I bet I won’t think about getting high so much.” Tony continued. Steve silenced him with a meaningful look.

Steve had a thing for boys with dark hair getting hurt- he couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand it when Bucky would flaunt his bleeding hands like badges in Brooklyn, couldn't stand it when Bucky would smile a mouthful of cracked teeth and blood in Europe.

 

But after Bucky disappeared, Steve had a space to fill. A little dark haired boy named Anthony Stark who cowed more than Bucky did at shadows but put his fists up all the same made the gaping hole a little less hungry.

 

"Don't you let that little boy slip through the cracks." Peggy had threatened. Do as Peggy Says, indeed. Except it was awfully hard when the little boy grew into a teenager and went actively looking for cracks every time Steve had his back turned. Or rather, he went looking for crack, because he was addicted to cocaine by the time he was sixteen.

 

Howard and Maria were good people, but they were smart people, and smart people sometimes aren't so good at loving without thinking. Although Bucky, he was wicked smart, and he loved wholly and unconditionally always. But Bucky was gone, which left Steve in charge because... Do as Peggy Says.

 

"Absolutely not." Steve said, snatching the little white baggy out of Tony's hand when he came slinking in at 2AM.

 

"You aren't my dad." Tony said reflexively. It was true in a way, but it also wasn't.

 

"Do I look like I'm tripping over myself for you as a son?" Steve fired back. It was true in a way, but it also wasn't.

 

"Hope you like a free loader, 'cause you'll never guess who's not going to MIT." Tony flung himself over the couch, Steve followed, arms crossed sternly.

 

"I think we read different acceptance letters, pal." He replied.

 

"Nope," Tony popped the p. "I burned the letter. Burned the application. Burned the lot of 'em. Fuck college. Fuck you and mom and dad and everyone else. Fuck the world."

 

"That's ambitious." Steve said, nonplussed. Tony's antics were on again, off again. "You don't want to go to college? Fine. You're sixteen. Doesn't matter. But you need to be a contributing member to society. So start thinking on what you're volunteering as instead."

 

"Was that your grand plan to convince me to go? Lame." Tony rolled his eyes. How did he get saddled with this patriotic goober anyway?

 

"No. It was my grand plan to give you another option. If you going to college freaks you out enough to become an arsonist, it seems to me you should be investing your energy elsewhere. Don't put your feet on the coffee table." Steve knocked Tony's feet off and forcibly made room next to Tony on the couch so he could sit down.

 

"I'm not freaked out. Who's freaking out? You're freaking out-"

 

"Tony," Steve began.

 

"-I'm fine. Fit as a fiddle, never better, I'm not freaking out. It's hard to breath all the time, sure. But I'm fine. My dad came to my science fair last weekend, can you believe that? I'm totally fine, nobody is freaking out it's all- everything- fine."Tony babbled along. Steve waited it out. He patted Tony's knee before getting up.

 

"You're not going to college." He agreed.

 

"Why? You don't think I'm smart enough? I totally am, I burned the letters but-"

 

"You're not ready yet, genius. You're too young. You're addicted to crack. No college, not yet."

 

So Tony didn't go to college that year. He spent it building and testing prosthetics for veterans at the VA instead. He spent it having panic attacks in his closet, a small part of him secretly hoping that Steve wouldn't come. A smaller part hoping he would. He spent it following his father's career in the newspaper and speaking to his mother a few times a week over the phone. It's okay, Steve, they're busy. Changing the world and all that

 

It was the worst year of Tony's life. Steve made him do things like play cards and go fishing and learn how to ride a bike. It was the best year of Tony's life.

 

"Hey," He said one afternoon, sketching out designs on graph paper at Steve's kitchen table while Steve sat opposite sketching out something else on drawing paper. Privately, Tony had always thought of Steve's house as 'home'. It was made for people to live in. You could spill grape juice on the carpet (he had, twice) and leave cups without coasters on the counter (he did, all the time) and the breakfast table could be used for more than formal dining and stuffy conversations (it was, always).

 

"Hey, who's that guy again?" Steve followed Tony's curious finger to a picture of him and Bucky by the one of him and Peggy and baby Tony on the kitchen counter.

 

"What? Never seen my exhibit? Sure it's still in the museum." Steve smiled. It didn't hurt so bad when Tony asked after Bucky. It made sense. They would have gotten along in the way that they would have hated each other wholly and loved each other fiercely all the same. Little brat, Bucky would have said. Quit breakin' my heart with your big brown eyes, huh?

 

Tony had been to the museum, several times. But he didn't like it. He felt like he was looking at a different Steve. A Steve before Tony knew him. It didn't feel right to see Steve in a spangly suit when he knew him to wear leather jackets and suspenders. Sometimes, Tony knew, Steve was Captain America. He had to have a job, after all. But with Tony, he was just Steve Rogers.

 

"Sure, Sargent Barnes. But who was he?" Tony wanted to know. Did he make you laugh? Did he make you happy? Was he your whole world and were you his?

 

  Tony hoped so. He hoped so, because that's what the picture seemed to say and he hoped that somebody had given Steve a whole lot of kindness at some point.

 

"Oh, you mean James Buchanan Barnes? Bucky was only the best guy I'll ever know. That's who he was." Steve replied.

 

Tony hummed. "Is he still around?"

 

Steve took in Tony's open face and the way he held his pencil in his left hand. The glint of sea glass blue in the backsplash of the kitchen. The sunlight warming the worn wood of the table. "Not bodily," He said, "But yeah, he's still around."

 

"Like a ghost?"

 

Steve Rogers so help me god, if you ever pull a stunt like that after I'm gone I'll haunt you for the rest of your miserable life!

 

Steve laughed. "Maybe," He said, "Maybe."

 

"Can I get a dog?" Tony suddenly changed the subject.

 

"Ask your dad." Steve shut down that wild hair just as quickly.

 

"If I get a dog, I bet I won't think about getting high so much," Tony continued. Steve silenced him with a meaningful look.

 

"If you dealt with your problems," He began to lecture. Tony waved him off.

 

"I have an addictive personality."

 

Yeah, so did Bucky

 

"Then get addicted to something else, kid. Get addicted to sunshine, get addicted to self care."

 

"You're one to talk."

 

"It's not my fault," Steve said lightly. "The serum makes me less aware of my personal well being."

 

Tony narrowed his eyes. "Bull shit." He said. "I bet you were twice as bad before the serum."

 

Ha, looks like he's got your number, pal

 

Shut up, Buck. Steve thought fondly.

 

The next year, Steve brought Tony to MIT. Howard and Maria were in Asia. One week later, Steve rushed into a hospital room in Boston to find Tony grimly riding out the repercussions of an overdose.

 

"Don't be mad," Tony began.

 

"I hope you aren't serious." Steve replied.

 

They sat in silence for two days, only speaking when the nurses asked a question of either of them.

 

"Tony," Steve said finally. "You gotta know that I love you, kid. But not enough to go to your funeral."

 

"You wouldn't come?" Tony asked, a little stunned.

 

"That guy Bucky, my best pal? Fell off a train trying to save me. Never found the body. I ain't putting flowers over your grave if you die over drugs after I visit him. Just not fair to his memory. You better sober up real quick, kid. I may be a super soldier, but not even I can pull you out of everything." It broke Steve's heart, it really did. He almost turned back and apologized, but he forced himself to walk away.

 

"You want me to drive you home? Your parents get back in a couple of days." Steve spoke to the brooding boy in the passenger seat, his grungy t-shirt advertising some sort of engineering department or something. Spring break normally had kids ecstatic. But Steve figured Tony was never exactly a normal kid, so he took it in stride.

 

"Your house is fine." Tony said.

 

"Are you sure? It's no-"

 

"Your house is fine." Tony repeated.

 

"Okay." The rest of the drive was made in silence, but slowly, the tension bled away to companionship.

 

Tony almost had a heart attack when he opened the door and nearly tripped over a yellow...animal. "What the fuck Steve!"

 

"Oh, yeah! I forgot to tell you, I'm fostering a dog. Had to keep myself busy with you out of the house. You can help me name her." Steve proposed happily, striding past Tony with Tony's luggage in hand.

 

The house was the same as it had always been; home. It made Tony ache inside. The people at MIT, they were like him in some ways. Smart. Most of them were really good people. But they just weren't... as human as... Steve. "I'm loosing my humanity at that place." Tony blurted.

 

"Figures," Steve shrugged. "Machines are fine unless you need a hug."

 

When Steve hugged Tony, it was like everything got squeezed out- all the anxiety, all the ugliness, it was all gone. Steve's buddy still sat in the picture on the kitchen counter. Tony could see him over Steve's shoulder. It looked like he was winking at Tony, saying ain't he the best damned thing in this world?

 

"Can we name her lemon?" Tony asked. It was a stupid name. Steve loved it.

 

Tony's parents ended up staying in Canada after all. It's okay Mom, I promise. I love you

 

"How are the drugs?" Steve asked casually one morning.

 

"I wouldn't know," Tony said just as calmly. "I think I'm allergic. I always break out in anxiety." Steve's smile was worth it.

 

"How come I never see your dad or something dropping you off, man?" Tony's roommate, Rhodes- or Rhodey, as Tony liked to call him- asked. "Like, I know you're Stark royalty and all that, but why you alway got Captain America dropping your ass off?"

 

It took Tony longer than it should have to associate Captain America with Steve. "Oh, that's just Steve. He's only Captain America for work."

 

Rhodey looked at him strangely. "Okay, but why's he the one to drop you off?"

 

Tony shrugged. "I dunno. It's just always been that way. Old family friend." He felt a strange urge to defend Steve. "He's real smart. People smart, I mean. And he knows things like how to... dry shoes out from the rain and make paper hats out of the news."

 

Rhodey gave him a long look. "Alright. Well, one day maybe he can stay a little longer. I'd like to meet 'im. Steve, I mean, not Captain America."

 

"I'll let him know, next long weekend. Hey, wanna see a picture of my new dog? Her name is Lemon."

 

Rhodey came home- came to Steve's house- to meet Lemon for the first week of summer break. She was much bigger, which made her even better.

 

"Wow, this is a real neat house, you got, Mr. Rogers. Who drew these?" Rhodey asked, pointing to a series of buildings in various states of scaffolding and completion.

 

"Tony. Aren't they cool?" Steve smiled, coming over to look at them with Rhodey, who whistled appreciatively.

 

Tony pretended to be very interested in Lemon, which wasn't that difficult.

 

"Hey, T, how come you didn't tell me you were an artist?" Rhodey called over his shoulder.

 

"I'm not, that's just... that's like design. Like a planning piece. Steve does real stuff, you ever seen it? It's really good. It's really good. Better than art museums. He drew me once and I swear I've never seen anything so handsome in my life, it looked so much like me." Tony shifted the focus away from himself. Lemon blew hot breath into his neck, searching for the tennis ball that he had hidden under his leg.

 

Rhodey laughed and Steve shook his head. "Ridiculous." He muttered.

 

Two mornings later, Rhodey picked up the picture of Steve and Bucky in the kitchen. It wasn't that Steve looked younger in the picture, per say, as he looked no different now, but... maybe his face was rounded, his eyes a little less knowing.

 

"This you in the War, Mr. Rogers?" Rhodey asked.

 

"Careful," Tony said, only half joking. "That's a goddamn Saint you're looking at next to him."

 

"There will be no cursing in this fucking house." Steve reprimanded. An old joke that worked like clockwork. The side of Tony's mouth dragged up in a smile. "And Bucky was hardly a Saint."

 

  "Well, he was real handsome." Rhodey put the picture back down carefully.

 

  "Oh sure, but so's Tony. So far I'm counting zero saints between them." Steve's humor caught people off guard a lot. They expected him to be all 'go America and apple pies!' Tony figured. As if being Captain America would erase him as a human being. As a boy who used to be small and bellicose in the slums of Brooklyn.

 

  "This is absolute slander! I won't stand for it!" Tony exclaimed. But he didn't mind it too much. At least not deep down.

 

  "That's the one friend you can keep." Steve decided as they waved Rhodey off down the drive when the week was up.

 

  "Captain America! Dictatorship undermines democracy directly! I'm shocked and ashamed!" Tony pretended his very best to be patronized. Steve rolled his eyes.

 

  "I was a socialist back in the day," Steve said lightly.

 

  "What?!"

 

  But Tony couldn't hear the answer because Steve was already inside. He stood on the porch with his hands in his pockets, looking out over the drive and the bird bath in the front garden that he'd had to replace after backing drunkenly over it several years ago.

 

  "If you think too hard, you'll blow a gasket. I can hear you from the kitchen." Steve said dryly, handing him a glass of lemonade. It was slippery with condensation. Steve held the screen door open for Lemon to amble out onto the front porch before letting it swing shut. She flopped down by the daisies.

 

  "I'm probably gonna die alone, huh?" Tony scratched at his chin.

 

  "You might." Steve shrugged. "But you might not."

 

  "Are you lonely?" Tony asked. Steve was used to expecting these kinds of questions from Tony and besides, the humidity cushioned the sharp edges.

 

  "I have you and I have Lemon when you're gone." Steve eased his long frame down onto the steps, his hair looking even more golden under the sun. Tony joined him, copying his sprawl.

 

  "Well what about, I don't know, a girlfriend or something?" Tony asked.

 

Steve laughed. In his head, he could hear Bucky laughing too. "You know, I think what I miss most of all is just having a best friend."

 

  "Bucky?"

 

  "Yeah. Bucky. I still can't make sense of it, probably won't ever. You know, I just thought I'd feel something deeper when he died. Like those siblings that know when the other one gets hurt because they just know. But when Bucky died, something in me was saying 'he's still alive, he ain't dead yet'. Went back and looked three times. Didn't find the body. Never did." Steve shook his head, mystified.

 

  "Did you ever... feel him die?" Tony asked.

 

  "Nope. So maybe he did die in the ravine and he just got buried under snow. But. It'll always be a mystery to me. Anyway, don't give me that sad look, huh? Most people died in the War. I got lucky. Little bits of Bucky'll show up in the weirdest places. He was left handed, like you are. Sam Wilson's smile is nearly the same as his was. The blue in the kitchen back splash is the same color as his eyes." Steve listed.

 

"You outta hang around Sam Wilson more. He's good friend material." Tony advised.

 

"Oh yeah?"

 

"Oh yeah. Lots of experience with fossils from combat."

 

"Har har. You're a regular riot. You ever get lonely?"

 

I'm lonely all the time Tony thought. Instead, he said, "Rhodey's a good friend. Otherwise... there are good people at MIT, smart people. But. I never played well with others."

 

"No," Steve mused, "You never did."

 

Tony's 18th Birthday came and went. His mother and father paused in their travels for a couple of days and they all caught up, almost like a real family. Steve hung around too, because he and Howard liked to encourage each other's bad ideas, and he and Maria liked to swap bad baby stories about Tony.

 

"Bet you know more about me than my dad." Tony stated after his parents had waved goodbye from the private jet. The airplane hanger echoed with his voice.

 

"No." Steve's comforting baritone joined in the echoes.

 

"Yeah, you do. That's okay. Glad to Hell its you and not a butler." Tony put his hands in his pockets. It was becoming sort of his default stance now.

 

"You would have liked Jarvis in the flesh, though." Steve smiled.

 

  Tony had to write a paper on a father figure. He pulled up his Dad's Wikipedia page. Then he looked at the cartoon Steve had drawn for him on the inside of his English 101 textbook. It was a picture of Captain America booting a scruffy mechanic out of a door, tools flying everywhere. But the message conveyed a softer side scrawled in easy handwriting: good luck, pal. I hope they don't find out you can't read

 

  Tony didn't turn in the paper because he didn't write it.

 

  "Why not?" The professor asked.

 

  "I have this weird relationship with my dad where I sort of don't have one and he's my father so I feel bad because Captain America is like the teacher you accidentally call mom except I have a mom too so it's all fine and dandy, it's just my parents are busy people-" The professor waved the grade on account of extenuating circumstances.

 

  "He waved your paper 'cause you got daddy issues? Gimme a break." Rhodey rolled his eyes.

 

  "I don't have daddy issues."

 

  "Bull shit. You love your dad and you want to be just like him except a little baby part of your is terrified you won't be good enough."

 

  The funny thing was, Tony couldn't tell if Rhodey was talking about Steve or Howard. He settled with a simple, good natured "Fuck you." And called it a day.

 

  "Hey, adopt me." Tony said in greeting. From the other end of the phone call, Steve pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and sighed.

 

  "Tony, for the last time, I am not adopting you so you can write your paper on hardships about being the child of an active duty soldier. Write about the drugs, community service, how you got where you are. That's hardship enough."

 

  Tony wrote about sitting at the kitchen table where drinks didn't need coasters with Steve over the summer as a kid, listening to an old record and designing a Rube Goldberg machine out of checkers.

 

  "Sounds like a decidedly easy time to me." Tony's professor raised an eyebrow. He had made it a habit of calling in the strange young man for frequent meetings. He was concerned that perhaps nobody had actually taught the kid how to answer a prompt.

 

  "It was. That's why it's a hardship, ruined all the rest of my life because Steve taught me what real happiness feels like." Tony didn't have a fancy answer prepared. He needed to get to his lab.

 

  He got a 100 on the paper.

 

  "Can you come?" Tony asked, balancing a plate of pizza rolls in one hand on top of his textbook. Rhodey grabbed the plate before it could fall.

 

  "Hey, ask him to send more pictures of Lemon!"

 

  Steve stood in his study, listening to the tinny background noise from Tony's end and Rhodey's occasional interjections. It was better. So, so much better than the frantic 2am phone calls Steve used to get from the emergency room of some hospital clinic.

 

  "What is it?" He asked, checking his calendar.

 

  "It's a parent visit weekend, but it's really no big deal- Rhodey misses you, though. Can you come?"

 

  "When did you say it was?"

 

  "In three weeks, I'm giving a mock presentation for the engineering department. Can you come?" Tony realized in hindsight that maybe saying 'can you come' three times in a row made him sound a little desperate.

 

  Steve was working that weekend, supposed to be taking new SHIELD recruits for field training over to Mongolia. "I'll be there." He said.

 

  "He'll be there." Tony relayed the information. Rhodey popped a pizza roll in his mouth.

 

  "That guy's gotta be, like, the most reliable guy on the planet, I swear."

 

Steve was there, along with half the paparazzi. Recently, he'd been getting tagged by the press as the avengers became more public. It didn't help matters that Tony was getting attention in his own right. He wasn't the kid genius of rural New York, population:1 anymore. Now he had papers under his name and haughty scientists to back him.

 

But Steve still looked for all the world like a goddamn father at his kid's middle school science fair. It didn't matter that the people to his right and left belonged to the world's elite. It didn't matter that he didn't understand a majority of the jargon. Tony was on stage. Tony was (for the most part) clean. Tony had on a dress shirt. Tony was championing anxiety (even if he was over compensating slightly with his stage presence). Tony was standing on his own.

 

Except from the stage, Tony gave his entire presentation to Steve. If he looked out at the crowd, he'd have a panic attack. Then, he'd go drink away his pain. That wouldn't do. Not for today, at least.

 

The tabloids blew up over Steve hugging Tony.

 

Captain America Cradle Robber?

 

Captain America: His Secret Son

 

Young Genius Shuns Father, Claims Cap Instead

 

But they could, and did, laugh about that. That didn't matter, that was stupid. What ruined Tony's life was the single, grainy photo circulating the web of him and Rhodey, Rhodey leaning in close to tell him something after Tony'spresentation, Steve smiling, in on the joke.

 

Gay Genius- Romance Blooms on College Campus

 

Stark's Son's Startling Secret

 

Stark Jr And Boyfriend Public

 

What ruined Tony's life were the letters shoved in his and Rhodey's box. The hate and, even worse, the sickening support- people writing stories and drawing pictures and- it was bad. It hit international news.

 

What ruined Tony's life was that that picture was the thing that finally got his father's attention.


	3. Like/Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a picture of Peggy in uniform, leaning over a blown out bridge and extending a perfectly lacquered middle finger to Bucky, who was standing in water up to his knees below her and returning the gesture.

"So you like boys?" His father's voice was echoey and far away.

 

"So you use TMZ as a credible way to check up on my progress?" Tony replied.

 

Howard laughed. "Point made, kid. You want me to handle the press?"

 

"As if you ever could." Tony rolled his eyes, thinking back to the countless photoshopped images of his father standing next to his mother's body with another woman's head pasted on.

 

"Alright, alright. Tough crowd. Let Steve know if you need anything, okay? It'll pass. And Tony?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

Howard paused, momentarily dazed by the blinking lights on his electronic display and distracted by Maria's entrance with food in tow. "It wouldn't matter. If you did. Or if you don't. What matters is your head, right?"

 

"Yeah."

 

It left Tony more confused than reassured, but he supposed it was a better turnout than expected.

 

"What matters is your heart, not your head, pal." Steve advised.

 

Of fucking course Tony thought. The irony.

 

"I'm not kidding, your head is crazy. So many ideas and anxiety and self doubt but your heart- that heart knows what's up. It keeps beating 'cause it's got faith in the body it's in, even if that head of yours has its doubts. That heart keeps beating." Steve said.

 

"Yeah, okay." Tony said, staring at the plate in front of him.

 

"Yeah, okay." Steve parroted. "Hey, listen, I'm thinking of moving to Brooklyn, what do you think?" He asked, completely changing the subject.

 

"Brooklyn? Well, it's nice, I guess. City. The city is nice. You'd have to take Lemon on walks, but I think she'd like all the different things to smell. It's expensive, though. But you do what you want, Steve." Tony shrugged, still staring at the plate.

 

"Not really."

 

Tony looked up.

 

"Like it or not, we got a family unit going in here, bud. I want you to have a place still." Steve said. "I'd keep this house, it's already paid off. But maybe I'd get us a flat in Brooklyn, somewhere near Red Hook. Old stomping grounds. It would be closer to work, and all." He was thinking out loud.

 

"This wasn't supposed to be home for me." Tony blurted. And why the hell was he crying now? "You weren't supposed to take care of me and this house wasn't supposed to be home. Home was supposed to be my father's house and instead home is here and you're here and we've got this- this fucking dog, Steve, we've got a dog! Don't you know that's a weak point?! Don't you know- you should have known! Known when I was hooked on drugs- why'd you come back why didn't you just leave, you're supposed to be a god damn soldier so don't build your life around me I'll only fuck it up!" Tony yelled.

 

  He was standing now and Lemon had retreated to the kitchen. Bucky watched silently from the picture frame.

 

  Always so angry, Stevie, where'd you get that from, huh?

 

  Steve studied the stubble on Tony's jaw and remembered when he'd been a baby faced kid headed to college.

 

  "So no Brooklyn?" Steve asked, raising an imperious eyebrow.

 

  They found a flat in Brooklyn with big, floor to ceiling windows and "old bones", as Steve said. It felt like old something, for sure. Tony couldn't put his finger on it. But it felt like an old memory of sunlight warming well-loved floorboards and... home but different.

 

  "Hey, Steve, I... think I've been here." Tony said, hands in his pockets, frowning. Steve smiled.

 

  "I didn't always have the house. Before... before Peggy passed away, I had a flat in this neighborhood. You'd come and stay with me then and sit in a little patch of afternoon sun when you were really little. I'd put you there so I could watch you from the kitchen. Then, when you got older it was just... well, it was easier to be closer to Howard and your school and Peggy was gone so. I sold the flat and bought the house. Had a promise to keep, anyway."

 

  The words sounded familiar, like they were from a childhood picture book that was once Tony's favorite.

 

  "I- Peggy, I'm sorry, I don't-"

 

  "-It's okay," Steve rushed to explain, as if he had been waiting his entire life for Tony to ask about her. "You know that picture in the kitchen, the one with you as a baby and me and the woman?" Tony did. "That was Peggy. She was a British intelligence operative, ended up being the founder of shield. We all worked together in the war, me and her and your father and Bucky. There was a saying- 'DAPS'. Do As Peggy Says. Bucky coined it. When in doubt, DAPS. She told me not to let you slip through the cracks. So. DAPS." Steve shrugged, an almost apologetic smile on his face.

 

Tony shifted and cleared his throat. Christ, this woman had his number when he was in the womb, practically. Maybe he was just destined to be a walking disaster. "Oh." He said. "You, you were friends with... with Peggy, right? You and Bucky?"

 

Steve nodded and smiled at the floorboards. "Bucky used to say she was everything good about both of us and then some. He was a die hard fan of strong women like you wouldn't believe, personally funded his three sisters' college tuitions. Doesn't sound like a big thing now, but back then, girls got married, they didn't get a degree. Bucky wanted them to get a degree. Peggy had a degree and could shoot near as good as him and he was sold."

 

"And you?" Tony asked.

 

Steve laughed like he couldn't help himself. "You kidding? I was a 90 pound asthmatic, met her before the serum, even. She was Bucky, only with a British accent and more exacting. I was smitten from the start."

 

Tony tried to piece together all of this information. "So- wait. Did you and Peggy ever. I mean, I know you were all really good friends, but did you like Peggy?"

 

"I loved her." Steve said, sighing and lacing his hands behind his head. He tipped his head back and looked up at the vaulted ceiling. "I loved her so, so much, Tony. She got cancer, because we didn't know then, about radiation, you know? And she was exposed to all kinds of x-rays when she cleared confiscated items for SHIELD."

 

"Jesus. Well. I'm sorry. I mean, really. Sounds like a really... like she would probably have ripped me a new one every hour and I would be headed to be president under her leadership, so I guess I lucked out with you, but still. Were you going to marry her? Is that why you don't date?" Tony asked.

 

"I asked her about fifty times. She said no. Can't say I blame her. I don't date because I'm no fun. I've got the single dad crazy dog guy vibe going for me pretty strong, I figure." Steve glossed over.

 

Tony narrowed his eyes. That wasn't the real reason. But Tony figured he had asked enough of Steve.

 

Steve bought the flat in Brooklyn and Tony helped him pick out new furniture. They both decided to leave the house as it was. Too many good memories to break up the set up. It would be like a time portal, a safe house they could crash for a week in the country. But the flat marked a new beginning for both of them. Steve was finally feeling ready to face the future of the home he had known in the past, with new people and without Bucky and Peggy. Tony was exercising his right to extend his leash from the house to the flat. He hoped his anxiety would chill out.

 

Bucky's picture and Steve and Peggy and baby Tony's traveled with them to the flat. They were the first to be unpacked, and took up their new station on the island in the kitchen.

 

"We'll have to paint," Steve said. "It's too drab." Tony agreed. They had the entire summer.

 

"Rhodey still your roommate?" Steve asked.

 

"Yeah, uh he- yeah. He's still my roommate." They had never actually agreed on it, but Tony had taken it as a given.

 

"Does he want to come paint?" Steve prompted.

 

"Hell no I do not want to come paint, but I'll sit around and listen to Mr. Rogers any day. Can you pick me up at the airport? I can be there in... actually, how does tonight sound?" Rhodey planned.

 

"Tonight? Well uh, yeah, sure! Yes! Tonight is absolutely fine! I just, I don't know how it would look with me picking you up at the airport, or-"

 

"Oh, what the hell, bring Mr. Rogers, too. I'll give you both a kiss at the gate." Rhodey rolled his eyes.

 

"Hah, I'll let him know. See you tonight. Send me your flight info." Tony confirmed and hung up.

 

Steve, who had been listening from the living room, gave him a thumbs up from the couch. Bucky smiled at Tony from behind the glass.

 

In Russia, the soldier shot his handler in the head. The handler had brown eyes, but his hair was the same color as- as St- his hair wa- the soldier screamed.

 

Rhodey waved at the paparazzi. Tony swallowed thickly from behind his sunglasses. They were Steve's idea, blinders, he'd called them. They worked more than Tony was willing to admit. His very own portable barrier from the outside world. Rhodey blew a kiss at a reporter. Steve laughed. Tony couldn't get out of the airport fast enough.

 

"Hey, Mr. Rogers, I got an idea. Why don't you paint this wall white and stick some pictures on it so they dry and then lacquer over 'em? I saw it on HGTV." Rhodey suggested three days later.

 

Steve looked delighted. "Now that you mention it, I actually have a couple of boxes I never unpacked from the old flat. One second," He disappeared down the hall.

 

"You like it here?" Rhodey turned to Tony.

 

Tony looked at Bucky's picture. That damn thing was becoming a touchstone for him. "I like it alright."

 

Rhodey followed Tony's gaze. "Pretty sad, what happened to him. I know if... if you died I don't know if I'd want your picture out in the open."

 

Tony chose to ignore the fact that Rhodey considered them the type of best friends that the museum said Steve and Bucky had been because it made his throat close in a weird way. "I don't think it's like that. Steve says he sees Bucky all the time, anyway. In little things, I mean. Like how I'm left handed and Bucky was left handed and the way my dad laughs with his head back sometimes is how Bucky laughed."

 

Rhodey shook his head. "Still though, man, that's just gotta be sad."

 

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. But I mean, I'm glad I guess that he hasn't stopped remembering Bucky. I feel like if he did, he'd be... it just wouldn't be good." Tony reflected. Steve without Bucky would mean Steve without smiling and hugs. It meant Steve without jokes and adventure. It meant Steve as a hard ass, bitter old dude saddled with a wreck of a friend's kid, and that didn't sound good at all.

 

  Steve emerged, carrying a battered old trunk. He set it down with a thud and crouch to open it. Tony and Rhodey mirrored his position.

 

  Inside was a leather jacket, pressed down flat like it had barely fit with the top of the trunk closed. Steve carefully took it out and set it aside. "Bucky got this trunk back in '34 from the old Italian carpenter in payment for hauling scrap wood. After we got put in a special task teams unit, he ditched that green footlocker as fast as he could and sent for his trunk. His sisters shipped it first class mail and everything. Ridiculous. Never seen a guy so happy to have a piece of home in front of him." Steve shook his head, a find smile on his face.

 

  Liar, Tony thought, what do you call the look on his face in that recording in the museum? In the picture in the kitchen?

 

  "That his jacket?" Rhodey asked. Steve snorted.

 

  "It belonged to a pilot, but Bucky wanted a bomber jacket so bad he traded his cigarette rations for two weeks for it. He loved that quilted blue uniform jacket like no other, but that came after he got the bomber, which he wore just as much on leave. Check the collar." Steve handed the jacket over to Rhodey and Tony. It was still in good shape, almost eerily, like Bucky would walk in at any second and slip it on.

 

  Burned into the leather of the collar were the words "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil- for I am the evilest motherfucker of the valley". Rhodey laughed quietly. "Quite a character, huh?" He mused.

 

  Say, be normal for once, huh? Bucky echoed the inflection of 'huh' in Steve's mind. He was always adding that.

 

  "Oh, like you wouldn't believe. His blue jacket said 'death is our business and business has been good'."

 

  In Russia, the soldier kept screaming.

 

  There was a lighter, two journals, and three matches tucked inside of the remains of a crumpled cigarette package. Steve set all of those to the side and pulled out an old cardboard box. It was decorated in stylistic swirls advertising something in flowery print. An old women's hat box, Tony realized.

 

  Inside were a treasure trove of pictures.

 

Rhodey held one up to the light and whistled lowly. "Christ, T get a load of this guy." He passed it off to Tony.

 

It was a younger Bucky, forever immortalized, grinning lazily around a cigarette. He had his arms crossed over the top of a young girl's head, leaning over her but looking dead at the camera. He knew what he looked like, Tony could tell from the picture, and he loved that young girl.

 

Steve craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the picture and shook his head. "He was such a tool." He remembered fondly. "That's Claire, she was his second younger sister. It went Bucky, then Rebecca- who went by Becca- then Claire, then Alice."

 

  There was a picture of Peggy in uniform, leaning over a partly blown out bridge and extending a perfectly lacquered middle finger to Bucky, who was standing in water up to his knees below her and returning the gesture.

 

  "People thought Bucky and I were horrific when we were together, boy did they have another thing coming when he and Peggy were in the same room. Bucky never gave his sisters a break and he missed them something awful in the war. Peggy became their substitute, I think." Steve recalled.

 

There was a picture of Steve, hunched out of the cold near a fire, his face illuminated in strange shadows thrown by the flames.

 

  Another of Steve squinting against the sun when he was a kid, the blurred outline of a Ferris wheel behind him.

 

  "Good to know Bucky could have rivaled my grandmother in a family photo album contest, these are gold!" Rhodey laughed, holding up a picture of Steve with a sour look on his face and a party hat on his head.

 

  "Bucky was picture fiend. I've always had a photographic memory, but Buck, he had a photographic memoir."

 

  There were, much to Tony's delight, countless photographs of Bucky kissing different people's cheeks in all sorts of locations. A sister in the kitchen, Steve while he was pouring over a war chart, Peggy as she aimed for a target, a little boy in a cratered wasteland, Steve next to a tree in '35, Steve as he slept on his rack, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve...

 

  Tony started sorting them into their own pile. Steve caught notice and picked one up. Bucky was leaning over a white picket fence with a daisy in his hand, his eyes shut and his lips comically pursed, his target the cheek of a younger Becca, who was making a disgusted face and pushing him away from the other side of the fence.

 

  "Becca's first day of fifth grade at the catholic prep school we all went to before the church spit us out to the public schools." Steve explained, a soft smile on his face. "He was a fool, always kissing somebody's cheek just for kicks. We'll put this one up on the wall."

 

  There were several of Bucky and Steve doing candid, domestic things. Washing dishes together, reading side by side, laughing over spit shined boots. "Lined up next to you, Bucky doesn't look so big." Tony remarked.

 

  "Funny thing was, he was never very tall. Topped out at 5'10", But we always figured he was six feet in shoes. It was his broadness that made him seem so big. His personality. He was a giant to me before the serum and a giant to me after."

 

  Larger than life, Tony thought, looking at Steve sitting cross legged in a mound of pictures that had him in his old uniform. Bet you know how that feels now

 

  In Russia, the soldier reached up for a gun and was startled when his fingers found it lower. I've grown he thought suddenly, as if this were a normal thing, as if he'd ever been anything before he was how he was now, as if-before he- be- the soldier screamed.

 

  There was another copy of the picture of Bucky and Steve that sat on the island. Tony tucked it in his pocket. Nobody noticed.

 

  "You loved Peggy, right?" Tony asked. He and Steve stood side by side on the roof top, looking out over the city with cream sodas dangling from their finger tips.

 

  "Sure did." Steve sighed.

 

  "Did you love Bucky?" Tony asked. Is that why you don't date? Is that why you looked the way you did in that picture? Do you know that he loved you too? Do you know the way he looked at you, the way it's obvious to see? Do you-

 

  "Sure did." Steve smiled. And then he sighed again. "Guess you're old enough now and it's isn't as illegal now so. Yeah. I loved him. I love him still."

 

  The summer night sounds of the city washed over them. A lady laughed and a cabbie yelled.

 

  "Well he loved you too. Anybody can see that if they're looking. If they know you as Steve the way he did, he loved you too." Tony blurted.

 

  Steve regarded him, the corners of his mouth quirked up. "Thanks, kid."

 

  They nursed their cream sodas late into the night. It was the last day of summer break. Tony went back to MIT with his copy of Bucky's picture, a new pair of sunglasses, more city street smarts than he knew what to do with, and healthy dose of anxiety for the new school year.


	4. Legend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   "I'm probably going to have a stroke." Tony remarked. The half finished robot in the breakfast nook made a concerned beeping noise. Rhodey glanced back at it and gave a sympathetic nod.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh mannnn the lack of italics is really cramping my style

  Rhodey came back to their off campus apartment, sweaty from his ROTC PT session, and threw his key chain into the bowl.

 

  "Anything new?" He asked, accepting the remote that Tony handed him.

 

  Together, they watched the news, searching for glimpses of Captain America amidst the smoke and flames.

 

  There was a new Hydra Cell coming into prominence that seemed to be carrying out a personally vindictive mission to kill Steve Rogers. There was some sort of assassin at some point, too, but now he seemed to be running from Hydra and the news couldn't decide if he was a victim or what was even happening with that situation.

 

  "Got a text when you were out," Tony mentioned. "That Agent Coulson guy says Lemon's absolutely thrilled to have the run of the shield base and is enjoying playing fetch with the screwdrivers in the mechanics' wing."

 

  Rhodey nodded, following the ticker tap running at the bottom of the screen. They had long since decided to keep the news to subtitles only. The panic in the news casters voice and those that were interviews sent Tony's anxiety trough the roof. "I'm gla- look!"

 

  Tony followed Rhodey's excited finger to the corner of the screen. A small figure in blue with a shield over his arm gave a two fingered salute to the Falcon. That made both young men breath a sigh of relief. Sam Wilson was the good type of level headed that wasn't afraid to call out Steve Rogers on his self-sacrificing bs. The two had become fast friends once Steve had relocated to Brooklyn, which happened to be only twenty minutes away from the VA Sam had recently been transferred to out of his previous one in DC.

 

  That's how Tony and Rhodey kept tabs on Steve, as he didn't have a lot of time for phone calls seeing as he was chasing down a massive killing organization and probably didn't want them to track a call to Tony.

 

  "I'm probably going to have a stroke." Tony remarked. The half finished robot in the breakfast nook made a concerned beeping noise. Rhodey glanced back at it and gave a sympathetic nod.

 

  "Well, I'm CPR certified, man, so just give me a shout if your heart stops." He have a dramatically cheery smile.

 

  It keeps beating 'cause it's got faith in the body it's in

 

  There was an unmarked postcard from Berlin a week later, with a cheesy picture of the skyline and "wish you were here" printed across it.

 

  Hey, pal. I'm okay. Wish they still had telegrams, but this'll do in a pinch. I'll keep an eye out for any news on your big Seminar. That's coming up. Break a leg, kid.

 

  It wasn't signed, but Tony knew who it was from, heard Steve's own voice read it in his head from the very first word. He went to his room and opened the sock drawer, carefully putting the postcard underneath Bucky's picture. I'll keep him safe Bucky seemed to say.

 

  "I know." Tony said aloud.

 

  He sat on his bed and stared at the wall until Rhodey came knocking and asking about dinner. They settled on take out.

 

  In Romania, the man saw a headline in the paper stand by the produce section of the farmer's market.

 

  Stark Jr Proves Sustainable Energy is Super!

 

  There were two more headlines about the Stark kid- because that's what he looked like, a kid. The man seemed to remember- he- there was. Well, the kid looked young to be that smart. But the man supposed genius doesn't wait for you to age. Anyway, there were two more headlines about the Stark kid's well received seminar on sustainable energy and one tabloid with the Stark kid and a friend and the other man that the man recognized in a cut out in the corner-

 

  Gay Genius Slams Seminar-

  Truth Reviled: The Shocking Break between Cap and Stark's Son

 

  A little rainbow flag was shown to be crossed out, and it striked the man as being funny. Funny as in strange, because that wasn't right. Somehow, he knew, it didn't make sense for the blond man to shun the Stark kid over homophobia because- because- be. It just didn't make sense.

 

  The man shook his head and walked away.

 

Tony walked into the kitchen for a spoonful of peanut butter at 2am and blinked blearily in the light. That was strange, he normally remembered to tune off the lights, but maybe Rhodey had turned it on and forgotten. He'd gotten back later after Tony had succeeded in his goal of actually going to sleep. Steve sent him a postcard demanding a sleep schedule for finals week. Tony couldn't just say no to Captain America when he was on the television saving the world.

 

Tony grabbed his jar of peanut butter from the cabinet and a spoon from the drainer, reflexively checking the label to be sure his own name was scrawled across it in sharpie. Rhodey had something against Tony sticking a spoon in peanut butter that was for both of them. Lame.

 

There was a quiet snort and Tony whirled around. A man sat in the shadows of the breakfast nook, watching him. Tony stood frozen, the spoon in his mouth, in boxer briefs and a ratty heavy mettle tank top.

 

"He used to do that, peanut butter was real cheap. You get that from him?"

 

Tony wondered if the man could hear his heart thudding in his chest, his anxiety peaking. He imagined he could hear alarms blaring.

 

"You got asthma like him, kid? You gonna breath anytime soon?" The man asked, his voice rough like he hadn't used it in a long time.

 

The spoon fell from Tony's mouth and clattered loudly on the floor. Rhodey's door slammed open, his classical music filtering out of his room as he created his atmosphere for cramming for finals.

 

"T, you good? You didn't break another plate, did you? Cause that's on your dime." Rhodey waited for an answer. When none came, he sighed and hauled himself out of his chair, carefully stepping over textbooks in nuclear theory strewn across his floor.

 

"Yo, Earth to Anthony! What the hell, dude, are you-" Rhodey slid his gaze from Tony's paralyzed form to the man at the table.

 

The man slowly rose and stepped into the light, both hands up. "I didn't mean to scare 'im."

 

"Holy shit!" Rhodey breathed. "You're Bucky Barnes!"


	5. Life pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I never felt him die, Steve had said

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof this whole thing and all the chapters before it are hella unedited plus the lack of italics may make it read strangely. Lots of apologies guys. Anyway here’s part one of the next update so you don’t have to wait too long. Thanks for reading!!

"Uh, so. I don't- um." Tony blinked out of his shock, unconsciously pressing closer to Rhodey.

 

"Hey, I'm real sorry, honest. I just- light hurts my eyes. They kept me underground for a while. There's no reason for you to help me, I know, but I gotta favor to ask." Bucky began slowly, apologetically.

 

You're so wrong Tony thought I've got every reason in the world to help you

 

"You know this man." Bucky held out a newspaper clipping of Captain America.

 

"Yeah." Tony agreed.

 

Bucky was silent.

 

"That's it?" Rhodey asked, confused. A look of indecision passed across Bucky's face before it settled blank again.

 

"I think- I remember- I don't. Know. I don't know. But I think he does and I just- don't. I don't know. I." Bucky licked his lips. "I am not sure. Who I am. But I know him. And he knows you."

 

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, bro. You were a god damn war hero. Fell off a train in Europe. But I don't know how the hell you're standing in my kitchen at 2am." Rhodey crossed his arms. Tony almost laughed, thought Sam Wilson.

 

Bucky raised his arms and let them fall. Fuck if I know His face said. Tony thought back to Bucky's picture, his touch stone.

 

"Listen, I think you're like. I don't know, aren't they calling you a fugitive?" Rhodey suddenly snapped two and two together. "No fucking way, Tony the guy is the assassin, he's been under Hydra all these years!"

 

Bucky looked a little panicked. "I didn't bring them here, I didn't leave a trail." He assured hurriedly.

 

"Yeah, no, I. That's fine. We just. God, we've got finals in the morning but you're here, and-" Tony tried to wrap his head around the situation. How was it that life went on? How was it that Bucky Barnes disappeared and reappeared just as suddenly? How was it that this man who Tony had looked at behind glass for comfort all the years was now standing in front of him?

 

Tony fainted. Bucky caught the peanut butter out of reflex and Rhodey caught Tony. They looked at each other.

 

"Dude," Rhodey shook his head. "Crash on the couch, I guess, but I'm putting him to bed and I've got nuclear theory to study. So... goodnight." He dragged Tony down the hall.

 

The man who the boys seemed to know as Bucky- but they didn't know know him, they just knew of him, had heard of him, there was a noticeable difference- put the peanut butter away and washed the spoon. Christ, they were both kids. The man was gone by morning.

 

Tony and Rhodey agreed to get through finals before contacting Steve. The very first thing Tony did after walking out of his last one at the end of the week was send a text to Coulson

 

Tell Steve to call me

 

From Coulson: Why?

 

From Coulson: Attach.jpg-pic-SGR

 

Tony opened up the image. Steve was in a hospital bed with Lemon curled over his legs. Tony's heart climbed to his throat. Is this what you felt like all those times when I overdosed?

 

From Coulson: He's been asking for you. Done with finals?

 

 From Tony: Yes!!!!!

 

From Coulson: Expect a black SUV 12:00 sharp. Your friend too.

 

  From Tony: Thank you

 

  From Tony: Is he okay?

 

  From Tony: What happened?

 

There was no further answer. Tony locked his phone in frustration, but not before sending screen shots to Rhodey.

 

  Tony got into the black SUV in a daze. He could feel Rhodey, a steady anchor in his mounting panic, but that was it. Tony thought they got in a plane, maybe. There might have been a train involved. But when he got to where Steve was his heart almost beat itself to death.

 

  "This is fine." Tony choked out before he tunnel visioned and passed out. Rhodey grabbed him before he pitched head first on top of Lemon who was on top of Steve.

 

  "He'll wake up, right? You said he was asking for Tony, so he's awake, right?" Rhodey asked, a heavy hand on Tony's shoulder after he'd gotten a chair for Tony to sit in.

 

  Coulson pursed his lips. "Well... he was asking for Tony... he's in a comatose state right now- but that's not- don't worry! He'll be okay! He's a super soldier, the guy survived World War Two."

 

  Tony put his head in his hands.

 

  Do As Peggy Says, Steve. How are you supposed to keep me from slipping through the cracks if you're dead?

 

  Tony and Rhodey got cots to set up in Steve's room after the third night. Tony because his knees buckled every time he had to leave the room- the nurse in residence mentioned something about an acute panic disorder with worried eyes- and Rhodey because the same nurse also mentioned something about a calming presence.

 

  There was nothing wrong with Steve Rogers. He looked for all the world like he was just taking a nap. The problem was that he wasn't waking up.

 

  Coulson wouldn't tell Tony what happened. Sam Wilson had no such qualms.

 

  "Fool idiot got hit by a Hydra fighter jet head on, and when that didn't stop him, he fell from the impact six stories onto concrete and when that didn't stop him, some guy blew up a building on top of him. We pulled him out, and he was still breathing. Asked how your finals were going. I said 'probably horribly' and he laughed. Then he passed out."

 

  There was a green duffel full of Steve's things by the side of his hospital bed. Tony riffled through them after the first week. There was a swollen leather sketch book in his things. Tony felt a little strange, going through Steve's things, but he couldn't stop now. He kept thinking he'd find something that would make Steve wake up.

 

  Tucked in the front cover were two letters. Tony read them, of course.

 

  Dear Steve,

 

  It is not long for me now. I know this. Don't cry for me if it won't make you feel any better. You were meant to be laughing, my beautiful boy. Although you don't laugh so much now that James is gone. I hate to go and leave you too, the last of our little trio.

  Figures you are the one to outlive the both of us, seeing as we've always gone to great pains to make it so. It hasn't been easy, Steven. So DAPS and keep living.

 

  Love always,

  Peggy

 

  —

 

  Steve-

 

    So this is just some crummy letter we're supposed to write in the event of death. Even though you know I won't ever leave you. I'll haunt you if I have to, but I ain't leaving. Anyway, here's this thing to you 'cause I'm not writing some big old sad letter for my sisters if I kick the bucket in this war. I'm not one for rubbing salt into a wound.

  Come to think of it, there's no point in me even writing this, it's just that this guy who's supervising the next of kin station is breathing down everybody's neck and I gotta look like I'm doing something.

  Okay, pal, here goes nothing. I love you more than peanut butter sandwiches and that's the God's honest truth. I think the priest here is on to me 'cause he keeps giving me these long looks. But I ain't ever gonna love another person like I love you and I can't find it within my self to be too terribly sorry one way or another.

  You're sitting one row in front of me in your new big body, sweating over your own next of kin letter like you're still 90 pounds. Who the hell will you send it to anyway? Don't they know it's just me for you now? Guess we both better not die or these letters will be sent to two dead people. Figures that would happen to us.

  But Steve, I mean it. I really do love you. I love you so much you have no goddamn idea. That's alright. So long as you keep living, that's alright.

  So DAPS and take care of yourself and DABS (do as Bucky says) and don't stop making horrible jokes, don't you ever stop loving, on the account of my theoretical death.

  This is stupid as hell. Ain't the whole point to plan not to die anyway? Whatever.

 

  The world for you and then some,

  Bucky

 

  Tony folded the letters very carefully along their creases and held them for a little while, feeling the weight of Bucky's and the lack thereof -and somehow the equality in importance because of it- of Peggy's.

 

  I never felt him die Steve had said.

 

  Yeah, go figure. He showed up in my kitchen on Monday. You should have known. He wasn't kidding about not ever leaving you, so don't you go and leave me in the process, Steve. DAPS and Don't Die.

 

  The inside cover of the sketchbook was inscribed to Steve in the same handwriting as Bucky's letter. It was dated before the war. Tony had only ever seen Steve draw in this sketchbook some of the time. He used it at the kitchen table and took it to the park, and it was always in his grab bag for missions, but Steve never took it to museums or the VA or the office or showed it to anyone else sans Tony. He used different sketchbooks for that. And now Tony had some understanding why.

 

  Tony carefully flipped through Brooklyn before the war, rough studies of Bucky's sisters and Steve's mother, pages full of Bucky's hands, his eyes, his smile- fleeting life forms on paper. Then there came war torn landscapes and ragged children. Whole forests leveled and Peggy and Bucky sprinkled throughout in Steve's careful hand. There was a full page devoted to the scene of Bucky in the creek flicking off Peggy, who was returning the gesture from the bridge. Northern Italy, 1943 Steve's scrawl detailed.

 

  And then Bucky stopped showing up. Instead, it was just blurred landscapes from train windows and sometimes Peggy's face. But mostly stationary objects. Water in a glass. A tree.

 

  And then Tony. Tony, Tony, Tony everywhere. Howard smiling with Maria looking on. Tony in the sunlight. Tony crawling. Tony smiling and drooling and screaming and sleeping. Tony as a toddler. Always in the same familiar yet different flat with big windows.

 

  And then Tony as a child in the house. Tony in a rumpled school uniform and hair every which way. With teeth missing in a grin over a birthday cake and lanky limbs reaching up to the cabinets.

 

  Tony as a teenager with a much gloomier disposition, raccoon eyes- strung out, slumped over the kitchen table. Because that's where he'd always come back to, even though he knew he could never hide the drugs from Steve, didn't even bother to. But he'd always come back to that house. And here was his profile, smiling slightly, as he spoke to someone over the phone. Here he was fishing and a cartoon of him learning how to ride a bike. At 16. Tony pursed his lips. Yikes. What a childhood.

 

  He looked at the man who was still sleeping peacefully. The man who had given Tony the bits and pieces of a childhood that Tony hadn't rejected vehemently and even forced in some that he had. Like the fishing. And the soccer. God, Tony had hated the soccer. Baseball had lasted a little longer purely because it meant standing still for longer periods of time.

 

  There was a flyer from one of Tony's earlier seminars at a high school science fair. Taped next to it was sticky note in Tony's handwriting. Sorry for burning the acceptance letters. Sorry for being a crack head. Sorry.

 

  There were sketches of Tony in hospital beds and with his arms crossed over his knees in the corner of his closet. Steve had never actually sat down and drawn Tony while he was in his closet, but Tony figured Steve probably had that image burned into the back of his eyelids by the end of that year. Yikes indeed.

 

  There was a certain desperation in the sketches, Tony could see it bleeding from Steve's phantom hand onto the paper, as if Steve were drawing these scenes so he could study them. So he could ask what am I missing? Why can't I reach you? What's going on, pal?

 

  Steve helped Tony when he was down and out, but who helped Steve? Lemon caught his eyes and whined softly, shifting her position over Steve's legs. Peggy was gone, but Bucky. Didn't Steve always say how Bucky was his best friend? But Bucky didn't even know who he was. He'd been in Tony and Rhodey's kitchen and the light hurt his eyes and he left just as quickly.

 

  "We think this is the man who dropped the building on Steve two weeks ago this Monday." Coulson said. Tony and Rhodey looked at the picture. It was Bucky, although he had on sunglasses and several layers and longer hair and a baseball cap. But his jaw was just the same. He had a mettle arm, but the way he carried his shoulders, powerful and sure, was the same as all the other pictures. "He's the assassin that had a rather messy break from Hydra."

 

  Tony and Rhodey shared a look. That can't be true, because he was right in front of us

 

  "Is there something you know about this?" Coulson caught the look.

 

  "No, it's just- if this guy's running from Hydra, why's he going after Steve?" Rhodey played their disbelief into confusion seamlessly.

 

  "Common enemies don't mean you're on the same side. Maybe he had a personal vendetta." Coulson said.

 

  "He looks like... Bucky Barnes." Tony said.

 

  Coulson pursed his lips, caught off guard.

 

  Gotcha, Tony thought, bet you didn't plan on us picking up on that, huh? I've only seen the guy's picture a thousand times.

 

  "There is reason to believe," Coulson began, "that when Bucky fell, Hydra found the pieces and made a second soldier."

 

  Too bad he loved Steve more than the war

 

"Seems like they didn't do a very good job now that he's running. If this really is Bucky Barnes, I don't see how he'd be the one to drop a building on his best buddy." Rhodey remained skeptical.

 

  "People change." Coulson shrugged.

 

  Tony shook his head. "Not this person. I think you're right. I think Bucky was the assassin, but I don't think he dropped a building on Steve. I think he's trying to find him, but he's not dangerous he just... he's looking for something he lost. That's what I think."

 

  "Based on what evidence?" Coulson smiled a little more patronizingly than Tony agreed with.

 

  "How's word of mouth work for you, mister?"

 

  Coulson has his gun trained on Bucky as quickly as he materialized. "How did you get in here?"

 

  "Call it a hunch." Bucky glossed over the question, his mettle arm whirring and adjusting ever so slightly.

 

  "I let him in. Put down the gun. Boys- always so quick to shoot." Natasha chastised, stepping in front of Bucky and pushing down Coulson's gun.

 

  "Hey crack head, how you holding up?" Natasha kicked at Tony's chair leg at the same time Bucky moved to stand by Steve.

 

  "Fine." Tony said.

 

  "Crack head?" Coulson asked.

 

  "Is he dead?" Rhodey asked.

 

  "He's not dead." Bucky said. His hands were clasped in front of him like he was consciously keeping himself from touching. "I didn't know he had a dog."

 

  "We got her a while ago, her name is Lemon." Tony said. Bucky held his gaze.

 

  "They kind of look alike." Bucky smiled lopsidedly.

 

  Coulson seemed to be at a loss for words. The assassin was not killing Steve. He wasn't killing anyone. He appeared to be familiar with Tony.

 

  Steve's room was starting to resemble a slumber party. Bucky agreed to surveillance as long as he could keep an eye on Steve.

 

  Tony left the room at 4am four weeks later. He had to get out suddenly. He wandered the mostly deserted hallways until he ended up out of the medical sector and in nondescript hallway with a broom closet. He kicked the mop out of the way and shoved himself into the corner.

 

  The door opened with a soft click and a body made room next to Tony. He had almost tricked himself into thinking that it was Steve. But when Tony picked his head up, he saw Bucky Barnes instead. Bucky's eyes said me, too

 

  His mettle arm was cold, even through Tony's shirt, but the shock was welcome.

 

  What made him big was his broadness

 

  Bucky's chest was solid. "You don't even know me." Tony mumbled, too exhausted to really care.

 

  "Sure I do," Bucky murmured. "You think you're the only guy with an addictive personality? You think you're the only guy who'll unravel at the seams if Steve doesn't wake up? Yeah, I know you. I know you like I know myself: in rough memories and abstract ideas too big for words. But I know you."

 

  Steve finally woke up two months later. It was slow and painful and he kept falling back into a series of mini comas, but eventually, he fully woke up (he had major brain damage from a building on his head, the guy had to heal, Sam reasoned).

 

  "Jamie, what the hell." Was the first thing Steve said when he woke up for real and saw Bucky. Then, he asked, "What's the date?" Coulson told him and Steve turned his head to Tony. "Whoops." He said. "I guess I slept through your 20th birthday. Sorry pal. Hey, how were finals?"

 

  Tony cried. Lemon licked at his face. Tony cried and cried and cried.

 

  "Hey, Buck, where the hell did you go? I looked all over for you, where'd you go?" Steve asked later.

 

  The soldier, the assassin, the man, Bucky Barnes thought about the chill of death. He thought about snow blindness and his arm. He thought about dark places and four different lifetimes. "Doesn't matter." He said. "DAPS and don't leave Steve. I'm back."

 

  Bucky came back with Steve and Tony to the apartment in Brooklyn. Rhodey went back to Boston to check on their apartment and their exam grades.

 

  What a funny thing, how life keeps going on.

 

  "You got a kid?" Bucky nodded at Tony, asleep on the couch, fully exhausted and ready to die and live later.

 

  Steve crossed his arms and chewed on his cheek. "Well... he's not my blood, but yeah. Guess I've got a kid."

 

  "Sure, he's Howard and Maria's. Looks just like his dad." Bucky said because it made sense in his head. Steve nodded, so that must have been right.

 

  "Got tracks on his arms and a wild heart beat." Bucky remarked.

 

  "Old news. Recovering drug addict and functioning paranoid." Steve was only half joking about the last part, but Tony said it about himself so he supposed it was alright. "He's a good kid, though."

 

  Bucky barked a laugh. "No he ain't and you know it. You just don't like seeing troublesome boys with dark hair getting forgotten on curbsides."

 

  Steve couldn't reply to that, so he shrugged it off. "I swear to god, I looked for you." He said, shaking his head.

 

  Bucky turned his gaze to the wall of pictures. "I hope not." He said sincerely. "It's my job to come back to you, not yours to come looking."

 

  Maybe Steve cried, but he hadn't cried for a long, long time and he didn't quite remember how. He remembered how to be hugged by Bucky, though.

 

  Bucky learned how to spot a panic attack from a mile away. He learned what Tony looked like before he fainted. He let Tony put a hand in his shoulder even if he was feeling jumpy as hell so the kid could feel grounded. Bucky became the physical manifestation of his picture on the island. It was easy. Steve had built a space for Bucky in his and Tony's lives since the beginning. All Bucky had to do was step into the silhouette.

 

  Sunlight wasn't always easy, and Tony- God, Tony. That kid was not easy. Made Bucky want to scream. Tony and Steve made Bucky want to scream. But it was worth it.

 

Sometimes Bucky's paranoia rushed in like a tide catching birds on a sandbar unaware. He had the instinct to choke and slam and shoot. But if he kept very, very still, the impulse would wash over and leave him feeling slightly weak in the knees.

 

This is living, you are alive He had to remind himself when he looked in the mirror and saw a the face of a man who was younger than he felt. It was startling. You are alive

 

  Something was wrong with Tony, Bucky thought. Wrong in the way that the men from the Great War had been when they came back- boys that went to war loving and came back haunted. Something was wrong with Tony that made him forget to eat, made him like an always exposed nerve when he came back from school.

 

  "I don't think he should go back." Bucky said. Tony settled down when he was in Steve's presence for long weekends, the nervous energy bleeding out.

 

  Steve looked at him, the resignation of the world in his eyes. "Oh, Buck. He's always been like this."

 

  But there was something wrong that Bucky couldn't place. Like a disease, a silent killer inside Tony's body. His heart beat was always too fast. Tony was nasty and mean but his eyes said little boy his friendship with Rhodey said I'm just a little damaged, be gentle please

 

  "What's wrong with Tony, Steve?" Bucky asked finally, his voice low and smooth in the night. They were looking up at the stars on the roof.

 

  Steve chuckled softly. "Figures you wouldn't give it up. I knew it, you know. That you'd get attached the moment you saw him."

 

  "It's bigger than anxiety. There's something wrong, isn't there? With his heart, I mean."

 

  Steve was silent for a moment. "Yeah," He said finally, softly. "Yeah."

 

  Bucky nodded to himself. "And it's gonna kill him, huh?"

 

  He didn't have to get an answer from Steve to know the truth.


	6. Life Pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You know my building? In New York City?" Tony began. 
> 
> Bucky smirked. "It's ugly, kid. A real eyesore."

"How long have you known?"

 

"When he was born, he was too early, y'know? And Peggy said 'don't you let that boy fall through the cracks'. It's a condition they call tachycardia. Rapid heart beat. And he's brilliant- Bucky my god he's brilliant. But he never-" Steve's voice caught on the edge of the moment.

 

"He was looking for hurt and he found it. Everyone said he was worried about not being good enough, but that wasn't it. Kid was bored out of his mind, got hooked on crack. Already anxious and depressed. His heart... with his condition, that wasn't good for his heart. Doctors say he's got a year, maybe two left before everything goes to shit. I told myself all I'd do was DAPS and I wouldn't get too close but Bucky. Bucky, how could I have done that?" Steve ran his hands over his face.

 

Bucky felt suspended, like he'd been slammed by something big and was hanging there in the time between then and now- and then all of the sound and the impact of the hit came rushing back. He wanted to scream. Tony and Steve made him want to scream- you're living, this is life

 

"Maybe he'll live." Bucky said.

 

Steve shook his head slightly, tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes.

 

"Don't say that," Bucky said. "You lived. Don't give up on him. Maybe he'll live."

 

Tony had a heart attack two months later. He saw the look on Bucky's face in the hospital room and nodded slowly. "I have four months to live." He said, matter of factly. "DATS and take care of Steve."

 

"Fuck you." Bucky replied. "Fix your goddamn heart, punk. You're supposed to be one hell of a genius, so for once in your life, fix yourself." He had to leave, because otherwise he was going to scream.

 

"I didn't actually... mean that." Bucky apologized later.

 

Tony look at him. "It's okay. You were right. I might have an idea."

 

  If Bucky could remember one thing about being alive in the '30s, it was that he was always hungry.

 

  But Tony with that thing glowing in his chest and his ghoulish face took his appetite away just like Steve nearly dying of pneumonia did way back when.

 

  "Pal, you gotta eat." Steve pushed a plate of something toward Bucky and Bucky pushed it right back. It fell off the table and shattered on the floor. Because that was what Bucky was now. A force of destruction. Made for breaking. And how come they never told him how to hold himself together for other people?

 

  Tony lived, but he became more and more like Steve and Bucky couldn't hardly stand it.

 

  Everybody had this idea that Steve was vulnerable. He was not. He was intensely private and notoriously hard to make conversation with before and during the war. Bucky remembered that much, because that much hadn't changed. Steve was just better at putting on a mask for the public now.

 

  Tony internalized and internalized and internalized and- but his heart was steady. His heart was steady.

 

  "Hey, I." Tony stood awkwardly in front of Bucky, who was plowing aggressively through pulp novels on the couch. He put the book down and gave the kid- although he was older than that now. Older and younger at the same time. "I need help. I need your. Help."

 

  Bucky waited. Tony waited. Neither of them spoke for a long moment.

 

  "You know my building? In New York City?" Tony began.

 

  Bucky smirked. "It's ugly, kid. A real eyesore."

 

  "Good, I modeled it after you. But there's a woman. A girl. A Pepper. Well, her name is Pepper and she works for me and I've been avoiding her because my anxiety is not- it's just. She works for me and I'm trying to figure out how to say hello but it's been two months now and I- I can't."

 

  "You just said it." Bucky shrugged.

 

  Tony licked his lips in exasperation. "Right, but I need you to help me say it so I don't have a stroke-"

 

  "What would Steve say?" Bucky asked.

 

  "Steve would say man up. Listen, I've carried your picture- Jesus Christ. You're my touchstone. Please." Tony replied haltingly.

 

  "You see me saying I'm not coming?" Steve was right, Bucky thought. Tony had Bucky from the moment they met. Hell, Tony had Bucky from before they'd met. Tony had Bucky from before Bucky had had himself.

 

  Pepper was a real knockout. If Bucky weren't a hardened assassin, she would have made his own anxiety spike. Her eyes were wicked smart. "You're that guy," She began, and Bucky braced himself. "You're that guy in the picture on Tony's desk. It's so nice to meet you." And she sounded like she meant it too. Bucky gave her a handshake.

 

  "I'm uh. Well, people call me Bucky. But I guess I'm sort of... I watch out for him sometimes."

 

  "All the time." Pepper corrected.

 

  Damn, she had his number too.

 

  Bucky shrugged. "His head gets a little crazy sometimes. Worst kid I've ever met. Worst heart too. Almost failed on him a while back. But he's a helluva good fixer. Fixed his own heart."

 

  And maybe that was the way they were supposed to be. Maybe the universe had planned it like that. Maybe god or whoever had heard Peggy after all.

 

  "Dahps and dells, lads." She used to say. DAPS and DLS- do as Peggy says and don't leave Steve.

 

  If Bucky broke things now, Tony could fix them. Tony fixed Bucky's arm when they discovered HYDRA's failsafe that was slowly poisoning him. Tony fixed the walls of the gym to be stronger when Bucky accidentally hit a punching bag too hard and sent it through the wall and into a heating duct.

 

  Tony couldn't fix Bucky's head because he couldn't even fix his own head, but he sure did try. Bucky humored Tony. He did meditation and went on walks with him, but he drew the line at the green tea cleanse.

 

  "Pal, I spent too long drinking stale water and you're telling me that's exactly what you want me to do when I can eat anything I want now?" Bucky raised an eyebrow. So Tony put that one to rest.

 

  Steve did not get involved. He told himself he didn't even want to know why Bucky and Tony were in the yard of the house at 5am doing Sun Salutations and encouraging Lemon to join in. He told himself the reasoning didn't matter, that it didn't matter that everyone knew Bucky wasn't totally buying in, because Tony looked healthier and stronger and more stable. His heart was steady and he smiled more often.

 

  Tony practically worshiped Bucky, but he was still Steve's little boy. He still defaulted to Steve when he needed real advice. Bucky's advice usually began and ended with Bucky taking care of the problem himself, or Bucky giving increasingly ridiculous solutions until Tony smiled and decided the world wasn't actually ending. Steve gave real advice. It wasn't always what Tony wanted to hear, but it was still real.

 

  "Am I a bad person?" Tony asked. Steve cocked his head and looked at him.

 

  "Tony, your whole life has been you impulsively surviving. You've made some bad decisions, yeah. Oh, yeah. But you're not a bad person." Steve finally relayed.

 

  "How do you know?"

 

  "How do I know? Ha. Well. I've known some textbook bad people in my time. Hitler, Red Skull. All those guys. And I've seen good people like Bucky thrive off of violence and it's scary as hell, it really is. The lines get real blurred, pal. What I'm saying is, we all have the potential to be horrible. It's what we do with that black energy that defines us. Bucky stares it right in the eye. You internalize it. But neither of you wish it on other people. That's what bad people do, they project darkness onto others." Steve clicked the top of the pen in his hand, thinking.

 

"And you know, I really do think it's because bad people, they're so unbelievably lonely. Ain't nobody who wants to shack up with evil. Doesn't mean all lonely people are bad, though." Steve shrugged.

 

Tony followed Steve's gaze to where it fell on Bucky Barnes. He had a new hair cut. Shaved it all off one day because he felt like it and then hated the way it felt. The second go around he cut it close to the way he looked in the picture. Except it was a little longer than the military regulations. Bucky was taking up the couch with his broadness and Lemon was giving him sad looks from the chair.

 

"You think Bucky's a bad person?" Steve asked. Perhaps it was rhetorical, but Tony answered anyway.

 

"No." He said. "Never."

 

Steve looked at him out of the corner of his eye, eyebrows slightly raised. "It's okay if you do. He's done some really bad things."

 

Tony watch as Bucky stood and picked Lemon up from the chair with one arm. He settled back on the couch and out the dog right on top of his chest.

 

"Yeah, but." Tony paused. "You said it yourself. He was just a kid when he went to war."

 

"Talk about me to my face, huh? I got good ears." Bucky called from the living room, his voice floating from underneath a happy dog.

 

"I ain't a bad person, wholly. But I got mean parts in me for sure. Only thing you got, Tony, is anxiety." Bucky added.

 

  They could all agree on that. Tony dropped the subject.


	7. Limbo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was almost funny, that death was what scared him. He of all people knew there were things far worse than death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of these days I will water my plants and clean up this jank formatting but today is not under that category

  "Okay," Bucky put the unloaded shell of a gun deliberately on the bedside table. "Not a threat, stand down, you're okay." He muttered to himself.

 

  Lemon cocked her head at him from the doorway. Bucky felt stupid, pulling a gun on an animal. "You're okay."

 

  But he wasn't, really. Not at all. There had been a dream and Steve was in an airplane and Bucky could only watch as it crashed. Or he was walking into the living room and Tony was dead on the couch. Or he was the one dead, and it was the dog that found him.

 

It was almost funny, that death was what scared him. He of all people knew there were things far worse than death.

 

Sam Wilson would have gotten under Bucky's skin if it wasn't for the fact that he was so disarmingly sarcastic and so obviously cared about the same people that died in Bucky's dreams.

 

So Sam was alright. Even though sometimes he wasn't. But he was alright.

 

"Hey, you know. I've know Steve a long time," Sam had begun. Bucky had wanted to reply I've known him since my bones were thought up. But he didn't. "And now that you're around, I realize I didn't even hardly know the man at all. Now he's sarcastic and a little shit instead of some stoic bald eagle."

 

"Bucky," Steve was saying now, "Jamie." Just saying his name like Steve was tasting it, memorizing it, saying it just to hear it. Bucky listened until he could breath again.

 

When Bucky could breath again, he sat down on the bed. His vision tunneled to small things. The finger nail on the thumb of Steve's extended hand. The white paint on the hem of his grey T-shirt and dark jeans. The droplet of slobber trembling on Lemon's chin, waiting to fall. She cocked her head. She winked at him. Bucky blinked.

 

"She winked at me." He said. The sound of his own voice broke a barrier and let all the sound back in on the coattails of Steve's hard breath out. Bucky came back to his body and time picked up to its normal pace.

 

"Jesus. You scared me." Steve said carefully, as if he was still unsure on Bucky's mental state.

 

Bucky offered a weak, lopsided grin. "Just Bucky is fine."

 

It made the little lines in the middle of Steve's eyebrows disappear, so it was the right thing to say.

 

"Well. Bucky it is then. You okay, pal?" Steve asked. But it was more of a formality. Who was okay these days anyway? Not Steve, not Bucky, not Tony. But then again, Steve and Bucky were never okay and the way Steve told it, neither was Tony, so this wasn't exactly any new development to get caught up on.

 

"Gonna be." Bucky said after a pause. And then, because Steve's voice was always so nice to listen to, "Talk to me a little bit and I'll be okay."

 

Bucky swung his legs up onto the bed and leaned back against the head board, closing his eyes. He felt the bed dip when Steve walked around to the other side of the bed and copied his movements. "Yeah, sure. Let's see..." Steve began.

 

Bucky didn't remember, but when he was younger, he used to be afraid of the dark. It was a dumb thing and he never quite grew out of it, just forgot about it. But sometimes, he'd get spooked as a young man and wake Steve up to talk to him. Bucky didn't remember, but Steve was always already awake with a story to tell. Bucky didn't remember and Steve wasn't going to remind him, but Steve remembered and telling Bucky stories was the easiest thing in the world.

 

"The summer of your junior year, I got so sick I couldn't walk. It was strange, because summer meant the end of winter which normally meant I'd be okay for the next month. But that summer was real, real bad. You had this project for English where you had to memorize a poem, except you refused to leave my bedside unless you were forced, and you ended up memorizing that whole book. You'd recite it backwards and forwards. And then after that you memorized more poems. Couldn't get you to shut up, you were a walking poetry machine. The gals loved it, of course, which only encouraged it and I think you had about seven hundred odd poems memorized by the end of that summer. You said you memorized them for me and I was too sick to call you out on it, but I hated the poetry. It was just like the Shakespeare. You ate that stuff up and played it off that it was because I liked it when the only thing I cared about was drawing. I had to suffer through that whole summer, bed-ridden, listening to your jackass reciting the worst, most convoluted poetry I've ever heard of in my life." Steve remembered.

 

"No, you liked that one poem. You liked a couple of them." The clarity and certainty in Bucky's voice startled Steve. He hadn't been expecting Bucky to remember any of that.

 

"No, I didn't." Steve insisted.

 

"You sure as hell did! 'I've nothing left to give you dear, but the roses by the water. I've nothing left to give you but my body from my father. Take my bones, won't you please? My eyes, my ears, my joints,my knees. It's not enough, won't ever be. Not for you and not from me. But it's all I've got to give you dear, and the roses by the water'- you liked that one. Didn't like many of them, but you liked that one, you told me so." Bucky replied indignantly. He didn't so much remember it as he knew it to be true.

 

  Steve had a funny look on his face and his jaw was clenched tightly. "Christ, don't fight me over it, I'm just saying you did. When we were kids. I remember you telling me, is all."

 

  "I'm not mad." Steve's voice came out soft and careful. "I just don't don't want to cry over my best buddy remembering some dumb poem from '36."

 

  Bucky laughed, the last of his paranoia from earlier melting away. "Good God, Steve. See, this is what those history books miss. You're so goddamn honest about things that everyone else would lie about but an alligator couldn't pull the truth out of you if it tried."

 

Across town, Tony stated hard at his phone. On one hand, Rhodey might like to come to his tower and check out the new advancements Tony was working on. Maybe even meet some of Tony's robots. On the other, Rhodey could be busy. And then Tony would look needy or clingy, like he couldn't live without his college room mate.

 

Or, Tony could call Bucky and Bucky could handle it for him. Or, Steve would overhear and tell Tony that Bucky wasn't his personal secretary. Or, Tony could not call anyone at all and be lonely forever and become a bad person because Steve said that had people are lonely but not all lonely people are bad. Or, Tony could call his dad.

 

Pepper watched discreetly from just outside the door as Tony stared hard at his phone. His head gets a little crazy sometimes Bucky Barnes had said. Pepper took a deep breath and stepped through the door. "Tony," She began brightly. "Is there anyone I can call for you?"

 

  Tony startled and locked eyes with... Pepper. An understanding passed between them in that instant. "I can do things myself." He said.

 

  "I know, but you're the one who hired me as your assistant." Pepper replied levelly, conveniently leaving out the research before assistant.

 

  Tony regarded her. "Okay." He said. "See if Rhodey wants to come see the tower."


	8. Lions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her name was Peggy and she was everything Bucky wasn’t and everything he was and Steve loved her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops had this written for like 5 days here it is! Trying to get some backstory and domestic Steve Bucky in there. Also Solo is a must see and that is all

Tony and Rhodey were in the kitchen when Steve came back from his run with Lemon. He wasn't surprised to see them, but he certainly hadn't expected it. Lemon was overjoyed and tried her best to jump seven feet and reach Rhodey's face.

 

Rhodey was in fatigues and upon closer investigation, he had an army green duffel by his feet. "ROTC paying off?" Steve asked.

 

Rhodey laughed. "More like I'm paying off ROTC. But yeah, Mr. Rogers, I can't complain. Got the weekend off anyway."

 

"Didn't you hear, they're going to elope." Bucky added, walking into the kitchen. "I'm going to be the flower girl."

 

"Good luck, my ten year old sister will fight you for it." Rhodey didn't miss a beat.

 

Bucky looked pleasantly surprised, which Rhodey counted as a victory because the man didn't have a whole lot of expression in the few times that Rhodey had interacted with him.

 

"No kidding? I had three sisters."

 

  "Steve said they all went to college on your dime." Tony added.

 

  Bucky shrugged. "Yeah, well. Would be nice if I could remember a few things about them."

 

  As it turned out, Rhodey did actually want to see the tower. Steve pulled Tony aside before he could follow Rhodey out the door. "You are not allowed to join the military." He said sternly.

 

  Tony did a double take. "First of all, you aren't my legal guardian. Second of all, I'm an adult. Third of all, why the hell would I even do that, Steve?!"

 

  Steve spoke slowly and counted on his fingers. "First of all, you'd be dead without me so, you're welcome. Second of all, I have yet to witness you do any task of adult life and yesterday Bucky had to walk you through how to do laundry- don't even deny that, I heard the whole conversation, punk. Third of all, the man I loved went to the army and so I followed and now we've both got a pair of cracked heads and a missing arm between us."

 

  Tony gave Steve his best 'I'm over you' look and spoke even slower than Steve to make his final points. "First of all, Bucky was drafted, it's not the same. Second of all, I'm not following anyone anywhere and who said anything about love? Third of all, thanks, I guess. Real parent of the year award. I'll get you a sticker."

 

  "You two are the most passive aggressive, stubborn shit heads I've ever seen in my too-long life. Get outta here, kid. Rhodey's waiting." Bucky intervened, physically putting his hand on Steve's shoulder and guiding him away.

 

"I hate that kid sometimes." Steve said after Tony shut the door behind him. Their conversation had left him feeling unsettled, the sarcasm difficult to separate from viciousness. Steve knew he wasn't the best guardian, but. But still.

 

"No, you don't. He does it 'cause he loves you. Knows your head is just as hot as his, knows he's getting to be more and more like you every day and he can't stand that because he loves you and he doesn't always love himself." Bucky reasoned. It was a hell of a wise thing to say.

 

"Okay, philosopher. And how did you come to that conclusion?" Steve raised an imperious eyebrow.

 

"Aw, Christ." Bucky laughed quietly and pushed on Steve's shoulders, setting him off balance. "You only used to do that same thing to me four times a day."

 

Bucky said it almost before he remembered it, the shaky images rolling in a split second later. Steve, snarkily commenting on Bucky's inability to hold down a job more than two weeks so how the hell are you thinking you can take me on too, huh?

 

"No, I didn't. And if I did, it was different."

 

"Right, different because I memorized poems for you and you'd only give me the time of day when I had a girl on my arm, I get it." Bucky said levelly.

 

Steve blinked. He almost got what Bucky was saying, but it went just over his head. He couldn't tell if they were arguing or not.

 

"Buck." Steve sighed. "I'm tired."

 

Bucky felt something loosen in his chest. 1943. Steve in his new-big body face down on Bucky's cot. Buck, I'm tired. Too tired to move.

 

"What, old man, did your morning stroll take too much out of you?"

 

Steve took of his sweaty shirt and put it over Bucky's head.

 

Bucky was on the phone with someone when Steve finished his shower.

 

"No, what you gotta understand here is that he is your dad, in some sense of the word. No, I don't care, you ought to. Hey- listen to me right now. Listen to me, are you listening? Take a deep breath. Good, do it again. Okay, breath again. You're okay, you're gonna be okay." Bucky waved Steve over to the open space next to him on the couch.

 

"As a matter of fact do I have a prize for you, pal. Steve Rogers has entered to room." Bucky passes the phone to Stave.

 

"I'm sorry. ImsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryimsorryI feel reallybadandihatemyself-"

 

"Woah, Tony, where are you, bud?" Steve asked. He was already thinking of all of the places Tony could be, but most of all he was worried that Tony wasn't in the tower where he would be safe and able to calm down away from prying eyes.

 

"Rhodey said I should sit in a corner- I'm sorry."

 

  "It's alright. I'm sure I've said worse to you. I got a mean attitude that rubbed off on someone else I know along the way, huh? Karma speaks. Is Rhodey near you?" Steve asked. It didn't matter anymore. The second he heard Tony's voice rising in decibels, nothing mattered.

 

  "Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

 

  "Well tell him to get you new ears, I already said, apology accepted. Let me talk to him for a second." Steve requested.

 

  "Hey, Mr. Rogers. He's alright. Not nearly as bad as college." Rhodey said calmly. Of course. How could Steve have forgotten. Rhodey was Tony's ostensible therapy animal throughout their entire college experience.

 

  "Okay. I trust he's in good hands. Have him call me if the thought spirals get real bad." Steve signed off and handed the phone to Bucky.

 

  "You were always the one everyone thought was gonna be the father of seven kids. How'd I land this situation instead of you?" Steve side-eyed Bucky. Bucky smirked and then softened it into a smile.

 

  "Well, for what it's worth, you're the reason that kid isn't in a group home. Hey, I'm not kidding. Remember the men from the Great War? How they had those crazy eyes and the anxiety- Christ. Awful. Couldn't function in society, even. But Tony, you've always told it to him straight. He can navigate the world, differentiate most times between thought spirals and reality."

 

  Steve elbowed Bucky. "Look at you, using all that new physiatrist jargon. Remember when we'd just call it 'addled' and move on?"

 

  Bucky snorted. "You're the one who's addled. I read up on it."

 

  Steve remembered how Bucky, before the war, would read anything he could get his hands on. This included an encyclopedia, journal of medicine, and a copy of the Old Testament translated into Yiddish, all donated to him by Mr. Klein who was the best tailor in Red Hook. Bucky worked for him for a time as a part of his ever revolving wheel house of jobs. That's how Bucky got to be so smart, Steve and Bucky's sister Claire used to reason. He learned by doing, and he did a lot.

 

  Steve sat, remembering. Bucky made him ache sometimes, deep down in his ribs. He didn't know why.

 

  Bucky let the silence settle delicately and welcomed, filling in the places where the history was supposed to be and patching up the vacancies left by unanswered questions. For the first time in a long time, he didn't have to consciously force himself to not check his back every four minutes like clockwork.

 

  Steve fell asleep in thirty minutes. It was strange, because Bucky's head wanted him to look over and see a much smaller Steve passed out on a ratty couch in an apartment building with scuffed floorboards Bucky would recognize anywhere. There was no context, but he was sure he would have recognized those floor boards.

 

  He wanted to find those floor boards.

 

  Bucky left a note on the counter, locked the door behind him, and walked out onto the street that was in a location he knew, but so, so different.

 

  A little girl caught his eye and stared right at him. He couldn't look away. She had dark skin and flouncy black hair that bounced in its bob as she trotted after her father. Bucky sat down on the apartment's stoop. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

 

  A crowd of boys gathered in the middle of the street, which was still made of uneven cobble stones, and started to organize a game of stick ball. They had backwards baseball caps and Nike sneakers and graphic tees instead of newsie caps and suspenders and busted leather shoes, but the routine was more or less the same.

 

  The ball rolled away to rest at Bucky's feet. One of the boys ambled over. Bucky handed it to him wordlessly. The boy took it, turned, then hesitated. "Do you really know Captain America?"

 

  That drove Bucky up the wall. Not the kid, but the question. Captain America was an idea. The Winter Soldier was an idea. He and Steve were just the warm bodies with the right dispositions to fill in the persona. "I know Steve Rogers." Bucky replied quietly, because Mrs. Rogers always said it was rude to leave a question go unanswered. Steve had taken that a little too literally, and that was why he had gotten into so many fights.

 

  A smaller boy who was all one color- hazel and olive- from his light hair to his eyes to his skin sidled up to the original boy. "Did it hurt? When you lost your arm?" He was clearly the more outspoken of the two of them. The rest of their posse had slowly gotten closer to hear Bucky's answer. It made him nervous, to be sitting down while everyone else was standing up. But he swallowed it down. "Yeah."

 

  And Bucky realized that it did hurt. Hurt like nothing else he'd ever felt since. Figures he'd only be able to admit that to himself around a bunch of angsty 21st century adolescents. "But it was a long time ago, so I don't remember it as much."

 

  The truth was, it hurt so badly it made his mind white out, it overloaded his nervous system, it nearly killed him. Maybe it did kill him. Maybe he came back to life- no, maybe he was was brought back to life with another man's memories from before. Just enough to be almost human, not enough to have an identity.

 

  Bucky blinked. The children were all around him now. Tony, he thought. Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony. Kids like Tony. That's all they are.

 

  "Mister James Sergeant Barnes Sir," The youngest of the pack threw out nearly all of his names, hoping to hit the mark somewhere. "What's your favorite book?"

 

  Bucky was caught off guard by the question and the sudden attention and the fact that he was outside of the apartment and wasn't killing anyone or being killed for the first time since Steve got out of the hospital. This wasn't exactly a normal interaction, but. It was something. Bucky swallowed again. Tony swallowed a lot when he couldn't speak fast enough. Anxiety is a bitch, Bucky decided. He swallowed again.

 

  "Oh. Well. Let me think." The boys waited. One of them sat down on the side walk, the game of stick ball forgotten. One by one, each boy followed suit. The sharp thing urging Bucky to take their feet out from under them subsided to a dull throb. "I like the book of Esther. Brave New World is good. I read a lot of science fiction."

 

  "You should read the Martian." One boy suggested. His friend made an ugly face. "No, don't. We had to read it for school."

 

  "Wait- Esther like in the Old Testament? Are you Jewish?" The original boy who had asked about Captain America frowned, trying to figure Bucky out. Internally, Bucky chuckled. Don't even bother, even I can't do it, he thought.

 

  "I'm whatever I need to be." Bucky replied honestly. At the moment, he was more focused on figuring out the world when Steve wasn't there and teaching Lemon new tricks instead of pondering where he stood with the man upstairs.

 

  "Did you ever think you were gonna die?" The hazel colored boy asked point blank.

 

  Bucky realized that he didn't know what an appropriate answer was to give to kids these days. Was he allowed to say sometimes I still don't feel alive? Could he tell them seeing Steve made him feel like he was both died and gone to heaven and just born for the first time all at once? Did children understand ideas like this?

 

"What's death to you?" He asked instead.

 

"I don't know, like, not living?"

 

"Then what's living?"

 

"Breathing, being conscious."

 

Bucky smiles wryly. Then I have died a thousand times.

 

"No, living is being alive. Being dead is when you aren't breathing." Another boy added his opinion.

 

Then I have died two thousand times.

 

"How do you answer when kids ask you hard questions?" Bucky asked Steve later. The note he had left was long in the trash even before Steve was awake.

 

Steve looked up from his sketch pad. "Just as honestly as I can. Why?"

 

"The boys in the street asked me if I ever thought I was going to die."

 

Steve blinked. Good. Bucky went outside on his own. Double good. Bucky came back alive. Triple good. Bucky didn't kill the kids he apparently spoke to. "And what did you say?"

 

Bucky laughed. "You're just as bad as they are. How do I answer Steve Rogers when he asks tough questions?"

 

Steve cast his eyes back to the building he was drawing. He was running a still life class at the VA the next day featuring urban architecture for a change. "Tell him the nicest lie you can even when he knows the truth. Especially when he knows the truth."

 

"I've never lied to you, Steve." Bucky said. He knew that in his gut. He knew that so deeply and truly and wholly that it could have been his own soul. Bucky had lied to himself before the war and during the war and he was still lying to himself now, but he hadn't ever lied to Steve.

 

A smirk played on the corners of Steve's mouth. "One time," He remembered. "You climbed out onto the fire escape and all the way down to the ally behind our first apartment because you didn't want to tell me you didn't take the money I gave you and you don't want to not tell me either."

 

Bucky ran his hand over his jaw. "Don't remember that, but it sounds about right."

 

Steve was chuckling now. "It was in the middle of a snow storm, Buck. At eleven o'clock at night, and I thought you were going to die for sure. You were a pathological story teller. Not a liar, really, you just made things sound so much nicer then they were. But when I asked you about it head on, you'd pull some stupid shit like climbing down frozen mettle in a snow storm instead of telling me the truth."

 

Bucky shrugged. It was all true.

 

"So Bucky," Steve threw his arm over the back of the couch. "Have you ever died?"

 

"Have you ever punched Hitler, Steve?"

 

"Yes, over two thousand times and no, not at all."

 

Bucky sat down next to Steve and kicked his feet up on the coffee table, just the way Tony did that made Steve frown. He reached over and lifted the Sketch book out of Steve's hands and started flipping through it.

 

"Hey!" Steve reached over, but Bucky boxed him out with his mettle arm. The sketchbook was old. It began with pictures of Mrs. Rogers and Bucky as a little boy. He stopped at the one of a familiar woman flicking him off from a bridge.

 

Her name was Peggy and she was everything Bucky wasn't and everything he was and Steve loved her. They were camping near an abandoned bridge in some place foreign. Peggy and Bucky built leaf boats and raced them down the little stream. Something had happened and someone had dropped something into the water and somehow Bucky had been the one to go and get it, but he couldn't remember the exact details.

 

"The reason I hate you, James, is because you are everything that I am and more." Peggy had told him one day, playfully.

 

"No, that's the reason I love you. You hate me because I love Steve." And Bucky had said it without thinking and he couldn't take it back.

 

"No," Peggy added another counter. "That's the reason I love you."

 

Bucky gave the sketchbook back to Steve, still on that picture. "To answer your question," He said. "Yes, over two thousand times, and no, not at all."


	9. Little

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get ready for the 4th of July dump kiddos!! Usual formatting disasters to follow, you know the drill. Thanks for reading!

  It was bound to happen at some point, that Steve would have to go back into work. But it had been a nice few months of paid leave.

 

  "So you're getting back in bed with the CIA?" Sam asked looking Steve up and down. He had shaved and his hair was back in military regulation.

 

  "I don't work for the CIA, Sam." Steve said, but he didn't correct Sam otherwise. Sam contracted out to SHIELD when they needed wings, but he'd made it pretty clear that he was still retired.

 

  "Hey, old man. Make it back from the geriatric wing?" Natasha greeted Steve when he passed by her on the SHIELD compound. Steve shrugged. "Still looking for it."

 

  Natasha turned from where she was going and kept pace with Steve on his way to clock in. "Good to have you back. Clint missed you."

 

  Steve glanced down at her, a smile ticking up a corner of his mouth. Natasha pretended she didn't notice. "Only Clint? That's a shame."

 

  Natasha shrugged. "Sorry Miss America, the polls are in- the people don't want blond Barbie anymore. They want GI-James."

 

  Steve laughed outright at that. "Good luck. No goddamn way Coulson is digging his recruiting talons into anyone under my roof."

 

  Clint was having a disagreement with the coffee machine in the conference room and Banner was attempting to calmly mediate it. They both dropped everything when Natasha and Steve entered in favor of Clint bodily hugging Steve and Bruce loosing the green tint gathering around his shirt collar.

 

  In Red Hook, Bucky disassembled his handgun and began oiling every single part. Steve didn't like guns on the table, but Steve wasn't there.

 

  "How's the newly resurrected?" Coulson asked Steve. Natasha raised her eyebrow at Steve as if to say see? I told you.

 

  "Fine and decidedly and understandably retired." Steve replied firmly.

 

  Coulson put up his hands. "I get it, I get it. So, that kid you've got in your will, isn't he Stark's son?"

 

  "Certainly, but I raised him, and he's doing private sector work for sustainable energy. No time for task teams."

 

  "Jesus, you drive a hard bargain. Alright, already. I get it." Coulson laughed. Deep down, he was a little wistful. Imagine the possibilities- a kid with Stark Senior's brain and Steve Rogers' morals. A pity, if fleetingly so.

 

  Steve had made a pointed effort to keep Tony out of his work. His team knew about him, but Tony had never met them formally. Steve didn't want attachments to be made with people who were used to disappearing at the drop of a hat. Natasha knew that in the event of Steve's demise, she was in line to watch over the Stark kid, but that was about it. She respected his decision. Or at least, she respected Steve's ability to remain human and separate Steve Rogers from Captain America.

 

  Steve had taken a part time role during Tony's rocky adolescence, but renewed his full time status after Tony left for college.

 

  Bucky reassembled his handgun. The kids in the street were at school. Tony was at work. Sam was at the VA.

 

  Bucky sighed and made up his mind. He put his bomber jacket on over his long sleeve shirt and laced up his boots. He combed back his hair and grabbed Steve's aviators. He tried to remember what it was like to be the young man in the pictures on the wall.

 

  On the subway, he kept the aviators down. Bucky only flipped them up when he reached the VA, because the front desk woman asked for his name. "James Barnes. Is Sam in?"

 

  "Oh!" The woman exclaimed. "Oh! Yes, yes, of course! First office on the left!"

 

  "Hey, man." Sam said, surprised but not upset. Bucky could recognize subtle emotions now. This was pleasant surprise.

 

  Sam thought Bucky looked like a goddamn model with that jaw line and the jacket and his old hair cut. It was weird. Weird how people could be damaged but look like gold on the outside. Human beings were incredibly strange organisms.

 

  Bucky took his hands out of his pockets and spread them out in front of him. "Give me something to do." He said. And then added, "please."

 

  "Sure, how's therapy sound?"

 

  "Horrific."

 

  Sam laughed and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. "Pony up, soldier. You asked and I shall deliver."

 

  Bucky found himself sitting in a circle with ten other veterans and a counselor. The counselor wanted to know why everyone joined and what they served as. What their favorite colors were.

 

  I got drafted and served as a killer. My favorite color is the blue-green of Steve's eyes, Bucky thought, but he couldn't say that. He didn't say anything.

 

The counselor wanted to know what they lived for.

 

How many times have you died? Steve's voice echoed in his head.

 

Bucky could remember the exact moment that he fell in love with Steve. Real love. The type of love the old couple that sat in the park in 1936 and fed the birds together had.

 

Bucky was seventeen and lying on his stomach shooting marbles by himself. Steve wasn't any good at playing marbles, which didn't matter either way since Bucky was only playing to pass the time until the former woke up. He was really too old to be playing marbles anyway, but it was soothing in a familiar sort of way, made him feel like a kid again. Made him feel like he didn't steal seven oranges and sell them last week for the money for Steve's medicine this week. Made him feel like he'd still go to heaven.

 

Bucky had done a lot worse for money in those days, and he'd do a lot worse right up until he got drafted. Money made Steve live and life wasn't worth living if Steve wasn't in it. There weren't any two ways about it.

 

Anyway, Steve woke up and cussed him out for making all the racket with the marbles on the uneven floor and Bucky loved him. It was just like that. Sudden. Bucky loved Steve.

 

The second time was when Bucky was eighteen and drunk and Steve was drawing when he stumbled in through the door. Steve was the last person he wanted to see, but he was the first person he needed to see, and Bucky had been drinking in order to come to an understanding with himself over boys in the first place. The deal was, after that night there would be no more boys and he'd just find a nice gal and that would be that, Bucky Barnes, no more of this, you've had your fun, now settle down.

 

Only, it didn't work out that way, because Bucky saw Steve and holy shit, he loved him.

 

Bucky wasn't sure he knew how to love anymore. The words were easy and the expressions were routine, but his chest still felt hollow and when he closed his eyes, he could taste the acrid scent of burning flesh. He was still a monster. A little monster-boy wearing daddy's clothes and daddy's smiles.

 

Bucky looked around the circle of veterans telling their stories. You are four times the human I will ever be, he thought, and you're nine times the human I ever was. The history books always got it wrong. They got everything wrong about Steve and he was the one they actually researched, so Bucky wasn't too cut up about them getting his own life entirely wrong too.

 

Bucky was not an angel. He was smart and he loved wholly, but he'd curb stomp and hate just as quickly. Bucky remembered that. He knew that. He sent all of his sisters to college but he killed older brothers overseas and he never missed a shot in between.

 

The counselor wanted to know what they wanted to change.

 

Bucky wanted to be better, but not really. Some small part of him was too proud of the soul that made it through to the other side. He wanted to love, but not really. He messed up most things he got involved with. He wanted to have a purpose, but not really. Sometimes it was easier to sleep until noon.

 

But Bucky would give Sam one thing- it was nice to think. He wouldn't have asked those questions of himself otherwise. Bucky missed learning. He used to know a lot, he thought. Or at least a little about a lot of things. The library was within walking distance and he had nothing else to do.

 

There was a young woman sitting on the steps with her head in her hands. Without thinking, Bucky reached out. "You okay, Ma'am?"

 

She flinched away and startled at the same time. "Sorry, I- I don't like to be touched."

 

"Oh." Bucky said. "I guess I don't either, no apology necessary."

 

The young woman gave him a rye smile and looked at something over his shoulder. "Yeah, but I have Autism, and you have PTSD."

 

"Oh." Bucky said again. He didn't think he had PTSD. Not really. Not in the way regular soldiers had it. He figured he was beyond PTSD by now. But people looked at him and saw the face of a soldier and they didn't believe he had come to terms with the terrible things that he did, so they called it PTSD. "Well, are you okay?"

 

"I'm okay." The woman confirmed.

 

"Okay." Bucky walked into the library and looked up Autism. He'd never heard the word before.

 

Steve came home from work to see Bucky standing and in his old bomber jacket. He smelled like the street and open spaces. "You've been busy."

 

"Not really. Got blackmailed into group therapy at the VA."

 

Steve winced in sympathy. "Yeah, don't ever ask Sam to give you something to do. It always ends in group therapy."

 

"Went to the library too, there was a girl on the steps and I talked to her. You ever heard of Autism?" Bucky asked. Steve put his keys in the bowl on the counter and flopped onto the couch, hiding a smile. He was reminded of Tony and how he got so exited over nuclear theory.

 

"No," Steve replied. "Tell me all about it."


	10. Light

  "You have the most jack shit bastard god damn case of fucking PTSD you crazy, confused veteran, I swear to god!" Sam yelled.

 

  "Oh." Bucky said. "Well, can't say I've ever heard it put quite like that before." He helped Sam off of the ground. Lemon ran in happy circles around them, basking in all of the excitement. She licked at Sam's hand expectantly.

 

  "Oh, hell to the absolute no, don't even get me started on your carnivorous veteran dog!" Sam snatched his hand up. Bucky gently nudged Lemon away with his knee.

 

  "She's actually Steve's and she's not a veteran. She just wants you to pet her." Bucky explained calmly. "And I don't have PTSD."

 

  Sam almost yelled again. His back was probably broken. But then he remembered that Bucky was as much a victim of his environment as Sam's friend, and they hadn't known each other long enough for Bucky to tell Sam to get off his damn back if it got to be too much like Steve frequently did.

 

  The problem with Bucky was that he didn't look dangerous. He wasn't even that tall. He was big, sure, but it came from his broadness and how powerfully and sure of himself he moved. There was a strange gentleness in his gestures, like he was always checking his strength. Sam knew that something like that had carried over from before the war. Nobody goes through a war and comes out gentle.

 

  Bucky looked, for all the world, like he was maybe a little reckless and just the type of guy you always wanted to have as your wingman (if he didn't steal your date out from under you), but he'd have your daughter home by nine and she'd be safer with him than in your own home.

 

  So it was always a surprise, after getting to know Bucky through Steve and then through his interactions with Steve, to come through the door to their apartment and get your feet swept out from under you. Because Bucky, he was so gentle. But all of that gentleness turned into blank and brutal reaction, and then he was not Bucky anymore.

 

  Sam took a deep breath. He was not going to loose his practicing license over a thousand year old fossil, even if said fossil wasn't actually his patient. "Steve's got it, I'm mostly moved through it today, and you definitely have it." Sam reasoned.

 

  "Steve doesn't have PTSD." Bucky shook his head.

 

  "Oh, yes he does. Ask him about it sometime, Rambo. He'll tell you. Took a while to realize it, but he had to start living again to take care of that crazy kid, and the first step to living with something is acknowledging it." Sam crossed his arms and looked at Bucky. Bucky shifted his weight from foot to foot.

 

  "Well, it's different."

 

  "How so?"

 

  "I already acknowledge that I'm the living testament of the capability of human beings to be evil. I'm way passed PTSD, Sam. Way, way far gone off of that one." Bucky snorted, and that was the end of that. It sort of broke Sam's heart a little.

 

Bucky wasn't supposed to have been able to break Sam's heart, but sometimes Riley showed up in the strangest places after death. One of them being in the depth of Bucky's eyes. So it sort of broke Sam's heart just a little bit. You could take the boy out of the '40s, but you couldn't take the '40s out of the boy.

 

Sam told Steve about it. Of course he did. He had to tell someone, and the way Sam saw it, Steve was plenty used to getting his heart broken by Bucky Barnes already.

 

"No, he's not living in denial." Steve smiled softly, glancing at his hands and then everywhere but at Sam. It was one of his tells. Sam knew when Steve stopped making eye contact, he either was trying to explain something in a way that wasn't offensive or trying to convey an idea too big to grasp all the way. It didn't happen often. Steve was pretty good about expressing himself, in Sam's experience. His fists normally picked up the slack from when his mouth wasn't running.

 

"Sam, he knows. He knows." Steve began again. "He knows what PTSD is and he'll tell you that he probably would have had it if he had the time after the war to reflect on what we were doing- what he was doing. But. Bucky doesn't. I guess, what I'm trying to explain is, he sees himself in three stages. Before the war, during the war, and winter soldier to now. He knows it's all him, but..." Steve picked at a hang nail and shifted his weight. He was bothered talking about it, which was puzzling to Sam.

 

"When Bucky- he. He... was not a human being. Under hydra. And he's learning how to be one again. So. When he says he doesn't have PTSD, it's because he doesn't. It's because he recognizes he's not straight in the head, but there aren't any of the memories for him to connect the trauma to, see? It's bouncing around in his head all the time and that's his baseline and that's how it was before. He's paranoid. It'll... get worse. When his mind comes all the way back. So Bucky, he's still in the war, Sam. He never left it." Steve stressed.

 

Sam took that information, packed it up, and put it somewhere else that he could get to later. "Hey, Steve, I really didn't mean to freak you out, man. Are you okay?"

 

"Yeah, just. I don't know. Hard to... it's just hard. To try to explain Bucky now, since I see him before, too. And he was a great friend and a better brother, but holy hell he used to flip the fuck out like you've never even seen. He'd have mental break downs or something, when he got real stressed, or if he had to stay in one place too long since that meant he had to actually start thinking about real things like me possibly dying or his sisters not getting enough food. He'd freak, and then he'd be fine on the outside. When Bucky's PTSD catches up to him, Sam, it's not going to be pretty." Steve whiped his hands on the sides of his slacks. He left Sam to think about boys with deep eyes who liked to carry the weight of the world and went home.

 

"Hey, don't worry about me, okay?" Bucky called as soon as Steve walked through the door.

 

"Wasn't planning on it, anyhow."

 

"No, listen to me for a second, huh? My heart knows you like nothing else. I got your number pal. So don't worry about me so much, got it?" Bucky tilted his head over the back of the couch to get a better look at Steve.

 

"Sure, Buck."

 

"Hey," Bucky got up from the couch and walked over to Steve. Bucky had grown a little hight wise during his time as the Winter Soldier, but he was still built like a bulldog: broad in the chest and shoulders. "Didn't I just tell you to quit worryin' all the goddamn time?" Bucky asked softly.

 

Steve shrugged and looked down at his feet. Water slid out of the corner of his eye and down the tip of his nose. Sometimes Steve cried and he didn't even know it. He never really learned to cry again after Bucky fell from the train and he felt so hollow he couldn't take a full breath for five years after.

 

Bucky cupped Steve's face in his hands like he used to do when they were kids and once in the war.

 

Steve was fourteen and he was sure that this time, his asthma really was going to kill him. Bucky's hands on his face pulled the dark spots from his vision, but then he tunneled so that all he could see was the grease stain on Bucky's shirt. "Look at me, look at me. Just breath. Breath when I do. Damnit, Steve, please. Breath with me, c'mon pal, c'mon...."

 

Steve was twenty and Bucky was shot and Steve wouldn't find out until after the ice and after raising a child that Bucky wouldn't have died anyway. The serum was already in him. So he followed the field stretcher, jogging along with one of his hands over both of Bucky's that were keeping pressure on the wound. Bucky kept coming in and out of consciousness and Steve felt like he should say something, anything, but he couldn't.

 

When they got to the tent, Bucky woke up again and his eyes were so glassy, Steve could see his own face reflected back at him in the blown pupils. The nurse wanted Steve to leave and everyone was suddenly rushing around and Steve was stuck, rooted to the spot. Bucky took his hands off the bullet hole just below his ribs and put them on either side of Steve's face instead. They were slippery with Bucky's own blood, but they might as well have been a life line with the way they anchored Steve.

 

"Hey, Steven Grant Rogers. Imma be 'kay, huh? Be alright. Imma be jus' fine." Bucky slurred before he got whisked away in the hustle. And he was okay.

 

"Stop remembering so much," Bucky now whispered in Steve's ear. "All those yesterdays get heavy. Put 'em down, already. You can come back for them later."

 

Steve memorized the feeling of Bucky's shoulder under fabric against his forehead and how steadily his heart beat. Nothing at all like Tony's. Nothing at all like Steve's own. "I can't." He said softly. Which was true, but he hadn't realized it until he said it.

 

Steve could face everything that happened. He could come to terms with it and put down his anger and his hurt, and he did that. He kept loving. He kept living. DAPS. He could let go, but he couldn't leave it, because it was a part of him just as salt is to the sea.

 

Bucky sighed and hugged him close.

 

  It should have been the other way around. Logically, it should not have been the ex assassin holding Captain America together. But, of course, it was Bucky holding Steve in their apartment and that was a truth that had been going on since the beginning.

 

  Bucky visited Tony in the City when Steve left for a week long training mission.

 

  They sat on the roof of Tony's tower and looked out at the sky line. Bucky was reminded of when he and Steve were lying out under the stars and Steve told him about Tony's heart condition.

 

  "Did he leave a lot when you were growing up?" Bucky asked.

 

  Tony snorted. "No, and I wish he would have. A real pain in the ass, always on my case about the drugs and my life choices."

 

  "Yeah, what an inconvenience." Bucky replied sarcastically.

 

  Tony glanced at him. "Why the interest? I can tell you he was the most involved dad I could have ever gotten."

 

  "I'm not accusing him, loosen up, kid. Just trying to get to know you. Just trying to get to know what I missed out on in Steve's life, I guess." Bucky held up his hands.

 

  Tony sighed and leaned back on the outdoor chais lounge. "Well, I was a first class disaster. We're taking about category eleven hurricane plus tornado, and I always brought all of that right to Steve's feet 'cause that was home to me. Wasn't supposed to be, but it was. He always knew, too. He always knew everything so I wouldn't even bother to hide it."

 

  "What do you mean?"

 

  "Lots of cocaine is what I mean. I had money. Money and lines of powder and I burned my acceptance letters 'cause I just couldn't do it. And what did Steve do? Didn't kick me out. Pulled me in closer. I did community service that year. And he made me learn how to ride a bike. I got this- this addictive personality, I think. I get hooked on stuff, got hooked on drugs so easily but I don't mess with that anymore. I get hooked on people too. Hooked on Steve, hooked on you," Tony laughed.

 

  "You weren't even alive for all I knew and your picture on the counter was my-is my goddamn touch stone. I'll admit that. I'll admit it. Steve is... he's really... he's... he's big for me." Tony struggled to explain, running out of words.

 

Bucky smiled and kicked back in his own chair. "You can say you love him, I won't tell."

 

Tony flipped the focus off of himself, squirming away from admitting to any sort of connection with affection that he might or might not have. "You love him, don't you? Or, you did, during the war. He kept your next of kin letter and I read it, you said you loved him more than peanut butter sandwiches."

 

Bucky laughed. "Christ, to be a kid again. We were younger than you, boys in a war made by men. Terrible thing."

 

A soft quiet settled between them. Tony itched to speak up, but figured that was only his underlying anxiety that expresses itself in word vomiting, so he quelled the urge and let Bucky reflect. In the end, it was Bucky who spoke up first.

 

"But yeah," He said simply, off handedly. "I love him."

 

So let him love you back, Tony thought. Stop making things harder for yourself and let him love you back.


	11. Lady Liberty

Bucky was laying on his back on the floor of his room with the lights turned off, thinking of everything. Thinking of nothing. Listening to the sounds of the street and the solid chunk of Steve's feet climbing up the stairs.

 

Get up, Barnes, a voice told him. And he thought about it, he really did, but he didn't.

 

Steve was whistling something out of tune, threw his keys on the counter. "Hey, wanna go to the Statue of Liberty?" He called out to no one in particular. But it was to Bucky, of course.

 

Bucky waited a few beats before his brain kicked into gear. "Sure, what for?"

 

"Tell you when we get there." Steve's voice filtered down.

 

Get up, Barnes, get up now. C'mon, get up.

 

Bucky blinked and forced himself back into his body. He was standing now. "Okay, wait for me?"

 

Steve laughed. "Yeah, that's the idea, anyway."

 

Bucky put on a plain white T-shirt and snapped his suspenders over his shoulders. He had already been half ready to go somewhere, maybe to the street to see what those kids were doing, maybe to go bother Tony at work or something. But the floor had been there and that was okay, too. Sam said sometimes it was okay to fall apart a little.

 

They were already out the door when Bucky realized he didn't have on a jacket. It wasn't even him that realized it, it was one of the stick ball boys. "Hey, Mr. Sargent James Barnes sir," He waved. "Your arm is cool as shit!"

 

Steve raised an eyebrow, a half smile walking up the side of his face. "Why don't you tell them they can just call you Bucky?"

 

Bucky laughed, because he was surprised he'd forgotten a jacket and he was surprised that he was happy to see that kid in the way he was happy to grudgingly love on Tony. "'Cause it's funny, Steve." He waved at the boy in acknowledgement.

 

When they hit the regular street traffic, Steve casually offered Bucky his aviators from where they had been on the front of his shirt. Bucky could feel eyes on him and Steve. It would have been more trouble to be inconspicuous than to own up to who they were. He slipped on the glasses and it was a little better. He could look at people back now, only they couldn't see his eyes.

 

"How come I'm an American icon and you're still pulling all the girls?" Steve complained.

 

Bucky flipped up the sunglasses so Steve could see him roll his eyes. "You still don't know a goddamn thing."

 

"I know plenty of goddamn things!" Steve bristled. A mother startled near them, clearly not expecting Captain America to be anything along the lines of Steve Rogers. She hurried past them when Bucky caught her eye. He flipped the glasses back down.

 

"Yeah? Like what?"

 

"I know... all the presidents in order. Forward and backward."

 

  "Oh my-" Bucky stopped suddenly. "Of fucking course you do." He knocked into Steve on purpose, who stumbled and bumped into a young man.

 

  "Hey, cool it, you're being a menace."

 

  "Cool it yourself, that guy probably won't ever take a shower now that you've touched him. I'm doing a public service, blessing street people everywhere with Captain America." Bucky shot back.

 

"So what's the occasion to call on our Lady?" Bucky asked. He used to call Peggy that, used to sit down next to her and ask 'how's our lady doing today?' There was a picture of Peggy in the war holding up a middle finger to German planes flying over that was immortalized in the Smithsonian exhibit. Steve remembered feeling Bucky appear beside him only to laugh once, lowly. 'Well, I'll be damned. A spitting image of Lady Liberty.'

 

When Steve and Peggy moved with the beginnings of SHIELD to America, he took Peggy to see the Statue of Liberty. Peggy said she could see Bucky in her smirk.

 

"Dunno," Steve shrugged. "Just got tired of sitting in meetings all day, felt like going out and doing something with you instead."

 

"You can just walk out of SHIELD?"

 

Steve shrugged again. "Probably not, but Natasha does it all the time. Not like they can fire me, I'm an American icon. I'll walk wherever I want."

 

Bucky smiles at his feet and shook his head. "Pal, that's Steve Rogers talking, you be careful or they'll catch on that you've got a personality that diverges from the comic books."

 

Steve gave him a look. "It's not that bad, Bucky."

 

Bucky hummed and stuck his hands in his pockets, side stepping a woman pushing a dog in a stroller.

 

The Statue of Liberty stood tall and green. She looked a little sad, Bucky realized. He wondered if she ever got tired, holding up that torch. She had to. They got ice cream at Coney Island afterwards and sat on the edge of a fishing pier, messing with each other and feeling comfortable in their own skins in the first time since they were born.

 

Tony sent them a package the next morning. It was a framed picture of the front page of the Daily Bugle. Bucky was grinning with Steve's aviators on, strolling beside Steve with his hands in his pockets, who was outright laughing. Captain America: Courting Communism? The headline read.

 

In red pen underneath the title, tony had written 'this is cute'.

 

Bucky hung the picture on the wall next to a grade school crayon dinosaur in Tony's hand from before Bucky was supposed to be alive. "How'd he get the front page before I did?" He wanted to know.

 

"Oh, he's friends with this reporter kid Peter Parker. He's a photo journalist for the Bugle or something, I don't know. But he's one of the handful of reporters that doesn't tear Tony to pieces and he likes science, so they get along." Steve explained.

 

"He gets trouble from the press?" Bucky frowned.

 

"Oh, sure. He's an emerging public figure. His father is Howard Stark. He was raised by Captain America. He did heavy drugs when he was a teenager and he keeps some odd company. They eat that stuff up."

 

Bucky crossed his arms. His metal plates re-calibrated and Steve looked up from his laptop. He laughed. "I would not want to meet you in a back ally. You're scary as hell."

 

But not to you, apparently, Bucky thought wryly. He almost said 'I love you' because what the hell, anyway. But he didn't. He sat down next to Steve on the couch instead and kicked his feet up on Steve's laptop just to be annoying. "Tell me a story."

 

Steve closed his computer and slid it out from under Bucky's feet. "And what does the Queen wish to be told about today?" He asked.

 

"I don't know what the Queen wants, but tell me a story about me." Bucky replied, resting his head back on the arm of the couch and meeting Steve's incredulous look levelly. It was Bucky who cracked first, a grin breaking the game. Steve mirrored his expression.

 

"Okay," He said. "We used to sit out on your fire escape in the summer when we were kids. It wasn't even really that big, but wherever you went, everyone wanted to go. So you'd climb out the window onto the fire escape and then I'd come out too, and then so would all of your sisters. People gravitated toward you. They still do. But back then, it was like you were the sun and if you ever bled, you'd bleed light." Steve finished.

 

Bucky made a face. "That's not a story."

 

"Alright, well here's your story. One time, when you were around eleven, you split a fifteen year old's lip clean to his nose and he spent the rest of his life looking like he had a cleft palette from the day he was born. That's how come nobody messed with you, cause that kid was honest about how it all went down. He said you had him on the ground 'cause he was saying something about Becca and you just nailed him.

 

"And then apparently you were standing over him offering a hand up and apologizing for his face, and when he didn't take your hand, you wiped you knuckles off on your pants and strolled away with your little eleven year old sort-of Jewish self. That's how he'd tell it to anyone who would listen because he couldn't believe it and I don't think he'd ever believe it, since he was fifteen and you were eleven and after that nobody wanted to be caught dead near one of your sisters. There's your story."

 

  It made everything quiet in Steve's head when he saw Bucky lounging in the couch, taking up space like he used to. The metal arm just made him look like maybe he'd bust your lip clean to your eye socket instead of your nose, but he was almost sweet, too.  Bucky had always been a juxtaposition of the kindness in his soul and the violence he'd learned and lived. Steve figured that's why people gravitated toward him.

 

  Everybody wanted to be loved by Bucky. It was worth the risk of getting your ass handed to you, and even that was maybe worth it too, because sometimes he'd apologize afterward when you were suddenly on your back with blood in your mouth.


	12. Left-handed

Tony looked in the mirror. He shook his head and spit in the sink, dropping his eyes to watch the blood swirl down the sink. Fuck.

 

What the hell was Steve going to think now?

 

Bucky's PTSD sort of hit him like a truck. Weighing seven thousand tons. And coming at him at the velocity of a rocket.

 

It was like paranoia, except it came every time he closed his eyes. Bucky screamed so silently he bit straight through his tongue and when Steve flicked on the lights, he got a metal fist to the face for his trouble. Fuck.

 

"If this is me becoming human," Bucky sobbed dryly, holding his head and rocking slightly as Steve stared at his fingers. They came away red when he touched his eyebrow. "Then I don't wanna be alive anymore."

 

Sam collared Steve on his way home from an office day at SHIELD. "Hey, how's it going? You doing okay?"

 

  Steve looked right through Sam like he didn't even recognize him. Then his eyes focused briefly and Sam almost wished they hadn't, because it was suddenly a difficult thing to make eye contact with those baby blues. Steve huffed a careless laugh. "It hurts him to be alive." He said simply.

 

  Sam didn't have to ask who. Bucky, of course. Bucky was finally getting out of the war in his head. But the trauma was settling and it was hitting hard and it hurt Bucky to be alive. Sam hugged Steve tightly around his rib cage. Steve resisted at first, but Sam hugged tighter. "Sometimes," Sam said, straight to Steve's heart. "People loose track of the love and it's our job to give it back so living doesn't hurt anymore."

 

  Steve sighed big and heavy and hugged Sam back. "I'm so god damn afraid." He admitted.

 

  Sam let go and gave him a look. "Man, of what? You're an artist in your free time and you bust asses in the name of America when you aren't painting pastoral fruit scenes."

 

  Steve shrugged and smiled a little at the ground before forcing himself to meet Sam's eyes. They were big and honest. Brown, like Tony's. Bucky hadn't ever lied to Steve and Steve hadn't ever lied to Tony. "I've raised a kid. I've kept living. But the scariest thing is that it all comes back to Bucky, always has." Steve started walking away backwards. He twirled his finger in a loop. "It's a circle, and it's scary, the things I'd do to keep that circle going."

 

  Sam watched Steve turn and walk away. He had a type of powerful grace, the muscles in his back moving subtly under his leather jacket like a cat on the prowl.

 

  Pepper poured all the liquor down the sink and Tony made no move to stop her. He probably needed to be tranquillized. Or something.

 

  "Tony, you know what I think?" Pepper asked rhetorically.

 

  "What?" Tony wanted to know anyway.

 

  "I think we should call Rhodey. And I also think Bucky Barnes is going to be just fine."

 

  "No to both accounts- Pepper! Hey! Negative, that is a hard no, don't call him-" But she was already on the phone.

 

  Tony did the only thing he knew. He impulsively showed up at Steve's doorstep at 2AM.

 

  Only it was Bucky who answered the door and Bucky had a gun and Tony fainted.

 

  What the fuck? Bucky almost didn't catch Tony. He weighed too little and he looked too haggard. Even Bucky could tell, in his mine field of a head he could at least recognize that.

 

  "I need Steve." Tony complained.

 

  Bucky finished his seventh cross word puzzle. "Don't we all. What the hell is up with you? New scar on you lip, I see."

 

  Tony put a pillow over his head. "Fuck off."

 

  "You're the one who came here, pal."

 

  "Yeah, I am, because maybe I thought I'd get some answers, or at the very least some support, but maybe I was wrong because you-"

 

  "Shit!" Bucky swore, throwing the cross word aside and covering his ears suddenly. "Goddammit! Quit it!" He shook his head and screwed his eyes shut.

 

  Intrusive thoughts. Tony knew those on a personal level all too well.

 

  "It's not you- Fuck!" Bucky ground down so hard in his teeth Tony was sure he heard them squeaking.

 

  Of all the things Steve was not expecting to see when he walked through the door, Tony and Bucky sitting side by side in the corner made by the cabinets in the kitchen was up there. He set his keys down on the counter and crossed his arms. Neither would meet his eye.

 

  Steve crouched down and put a hand on both of their respective knees. "Here's the deal," He said. "You have PTSD." He looked at Bucky. "And you have...a lot." He looked at Tony. "And this clearly isn't working out for either of you and it's killing me to see you dying."

 

  It was Bucky who spoke up first. "A deal is when you say something we don't like and we counter with something you don't like and then we compromise, Steve." He said, his voice a little gravely. But it was still Bucky. It was the most Bucky Steve had heard him be in weeks.

 

"I don't have a deal, I just. I don't know. I don't know. Is that a new scar?" Steve suddenly noticed, frowning at Tony's face.

 

So of course, Tony had to tell them. He had to tell them about going to a bar and getting in a fight because he felt like he was loosing his footing.

 

Bucky looked at him like Tony was personally taking a jack hammer to his heart and shared a knowing look with Steve. Later, he sat with Tony on the fire escape as Steve planned an art class at the VA for the following day to let off some nervous energy.

 

"I don't know if you know this, but we're both left handed, and my old man was an alcoholic." Bucky said slowly. Tony liked listening to Bucky's voice. It had a grit in it where Steve's was smoother. "His war messed him up just like my war did when it came to me and he drank till he couldn't get mad at himself anymore and started getting mad at my Ma and my sisters and me."

 

Tony wanted to ask so you're remembering more now? Wanted to ask why that, of all things, to remember? But he let Bucky practice talking instead.

 

"Before I got shot up with that bastardized serum, I had a shit ton of scars. Beer bottles busted over my head all the time. Lousy way to grow up, 'cause I'm not very angry. Never was, temperamentally, that was Steve's schtick. So I grew up afraid of men. That's the god's honest truth, if you want to know it. I just took it, took all of it. I think my Pa looked at me and he saw his own face staring back and he just wanted to kill it." Bucky puffed out his cheeks and leaned against the rail of the fire escape.

 

"Got involved with some street gangs and there was always cheap liquor. So then I became an alcoholic, too. Only I never got angry at anyone, so no one could tell. Steve could tell, but he wasn't everyone. They just thought that I was the life of the party and parties had liquor and I needed that so bad I could have died. We become addicted to these lifestyles, because it's what we've seen over and over and when we mirror them, we just give up. But I'm not my father's son. And you are not anyone's but who you choose. Anxiety happens- Jesus, it happens. But it follows a pattern. Find the pattern and bust that business wide open. Shatter it and swallow it whole. That's how you get better. You break all the badness that you can and then you swallow it whole and make it yours."

 

"Is that what you're doing now? Swallowing shards? Seems painful."

 

Bucky smiled wryly. "Well. Never said it wasn't. And I got a lot of badness to bust up, anyhow."

 

Tony licked his lips and swallowed. "I uh." He swallowed again. "Reason I'm so...unsteady I guess- I'm unsteady because I can't love anyone. And I'll die alone. Gonna die alone 'cause I can't love."

 

Bucky was reminded of the penguins he saw on Discovery Channel that spit up their food all of the sudden to feed their chics. That's what Tony spoke like; sudden regurgitation. All of it at once with no time to prepare.

 

"What?" Bucky asked eloquently.

 

"I mean uh. I mean. You heard of people who are Asexual?" Tony asked carefully. He was sweating even though the night was cool.

 

Bucky gave him a side eye. He almost had a clever response but he bit it back. "Yeah."

 

"Well that's what I mean." Tony swallowed again.

 

Bucky shrugged. "Sex isn't everything, kid."

 

Tony put his hands on top of his head to breath better. "Okay funny story, so believe it or not, I actually don't want to be having this conversation in any way shape or form with you, so if-"

 

Bucky plowed over him. "Yeah you do, shut up a sec. Listen, it's your body. Doesn't mean you love any less." He looked down at the nails on his flesh hand. Two were chipped. "I spent too long a part of my flesh and blood full human life hating myself and loving Steve. But I- it's different. It's just different. I can't. But you don't have to... be like me. Don't have to grow up all twisted inside."

 

Bucky rolled his shoulders. "You. Everyone. The thing is. I wasn't ever all right. Even before the war I was sort of a nut case because I hated myself so much and I couldn't ever get enough of life because I get hooked on things too easy. But it's different now, and you've grown up with it being different, so don't clip your own wings, okay?"

 

Tony made a vague noise of acknowledgement. Bucky had a sudden epiphany.

 

"It's more that you think nobody's gonna love you, huh?"

 

Tony kept very, very still, even when he felt himself being pressed into Bucky's chest. Bucky hugged like a father. It was left over from his stint as an older brother. He cupped the back of Tony's head and made him feel twelve again.

 

"Look around you. People already love you. And you know what? You and I, we've gotta keep on swallowing shards even when it hurts too bad to live because Steve did it for us and we need to take care of ourselves so he doesn't have to for once. That's the deal. That's our deal. Okay?" 

 

"Okay." Tony agreed.

 

That night, Bucky cried so hard his nose bled. But he was quiet and it was dark and across the hall, Steve finally got a full night of sleep.

 

He looked at himself in the mirror and smiled at his bloody reflection. A double reality hit him sideways and suddenly he was seeing his bloody face through a curtain of long hair in a spotty mirror. He cracked the sink from clenching his hands around the sides too hard.

 

It was 1974 and the Winter Soldier was watching his split lip heal before his very eyes. It was 1928 and Bucky Barnes slammed his knuckles against the mouth of a much older boy and busted it straight to his nose so it looked like a cleft pallet. It was 2009 and the warmth on his face following the butt of the rifle let him know his nose was broken-

 

The half of the porcelain that was under Bucky's mettle hand crumbled to dust in his fist. He stumbled sideways with the sudden loss of balance.

 

  James Buchanan Barnes caught his reflection in the mirror again. He slicked his hair back with the blood on his hands and laughed. "You absolute freak," He told the young man with old eyes staring back at him. "You're gonna be okay. You fell off a goddamn train and survived Siberia and you have to be okay, so hang on. Just hang on."

 

  His reflection gave him a look. "You will," Bucky insisted. "You will for sure make it out of this."

 

  And then, when he had washed off the blood and turned off the light, he whispered one single "...I think." Into the dark. Just in case he didn't make it out.


	13. Lift

  Just as suddenly as Bucky's trauma settled, it lifted.

 

  "Okay, so I believe you now." Sam Wilson said, materializing at Steve's elbow. Tony was presenting his newest technology at a gala. Steve always kept his work life separate from Tony, but he wasn't going to keep people from supporting him. Maybe when Tony was younger but... there were only so many things Steve could protect him from.

 

  "What do you mean?" Steve asked, knocking his elbow into Sam's rib cage.

 

  "Hey! Take it easy! Remember when you said Bucky didn't have PTSD? Well you were fuckin' right. He's got something but it's not anything I've seen. Ain't nobody that just wakes up one morning and gets a haircut and decides they're finished with trauma. Ain't nobody that can do that unless trauma's finished with them." Sam was eyeing Bucky, who was standing in a double breasted gray suit off of Tony's shoulder.

 

  Steve hummed. "Yeah, well. Bucky's always been patient. If anyone's gonna wait out their own hell, it'd be him."

 

  "I'm just saying I believe you now. He didn't have no PTSD." Sam repeated. He'd never seen anything like it. 

 

  Bucky had digressed into the equivalent of a paranoid, boarder line schizophrenic over the course of a week. In between, sometimes you could find flashes of him. A dry joke in between his silent screams. And those had been something else entirely.

 

  Sam served as the unofficial on call babysitter for the old cyborg. It was unsettling as hell, to see Bucky grit his teeth right through his tongue, sweating and crying silent tears like he was in the worst type of pain. Like the air was acid on his skin. And maybe it was.

 

  But then one day, Bucky had opened his eyes and he didn't feel like he was in purgatory. He was tired, sure, but he was him. He was in his own head- for real, this time. He felt guilt and he felt the weight of memories and he felt helpless but he felt alive. Finally, finally, he felt alive.

 

  So he got out of bed and got dressed and waved at the kids in the street before walking three blocks west for a hair cut.

 

  Dr. Banner said he didn't think anything of that scale would happen again, that it appeared Bucky's brain had been healing itself. The body had been in hell, but the brain was slowly reconnecting memories with context. Bucky came out of the war.

 

  "No." Steve agreed. "No, he didn't. He might have it now, though."

 

  "How so?"

 

  "I have no idea what the hell that was except for him reliving the last million or so years. Going through it so he could get out of it. So I figure now that his mind has got it mostly sorted out, he might have a little PTSD. But who knows. Bucky's just. I don't know." Steve lost his train of thought.

 

  A champaign bottle popped and he watched Bucky's shoulders fly up, his whole body tensing.

 

  Oh, yeah, pal. Sounds just like a rifle from far off, don't it?

 

  Steve said a prayer to a God he didn't think he believed in. It was more of a plea. Can't you just leave that guy alone for one second of his whole entire life, Boss? Then he remembered that Bucky had a Bar mitzvah way back when and figured to hell with religion anyway.

 

  It was standing room only and Bucky liked to be near the doors these days anyway, so Steve let some old couple weighed down by furs and jewels take their seats and stood respectfully in the back.

 

  Tony found Steve anyway. He always did. "Good evening," He addressed the crowd, speaking straight to Steve Rogers instead.

 

  About forty five minutes in, the door swung open quietly and a body slipped in. "What'd I miss?" Rhodey murmured, still in uniform from wherever he'd come from. Steve frowned. "Uh..." He had been paying attention, truly, it was just that science and sustainable energy and all... it just slipped by him sometimes.

 

  "He was just explaining his arc reactor and how he's making it into micro tech, for military grade and civilian. Cell phones, trackers. Just tiny batteries. Stuff like that." Bucky explained softly, not missing a beat.

 

  "Oh, okay. Hey, good to see you, Mr. Barnes." Rhodey nodded toward Bucky.

 

  Bucky smiled slightly. "Likewise."

 

  Tony received a standing ovation from the people with the money, which Steve figured was great. Bucky held an actual conversation with him about it, to which both Tony and Rhodey were surprised about.

 

  "He'd keep up with your old man. You don't believe me, call him up sometime. Ask Howard Stark how an eighteen year old jack ass fixed his flying car by rewiring the entire transmission just because." Steve secretly enjoyed the look on Tony and Rhodey's faces. They didn't quite believe it, but at the same time, they really did because why not?

 

"What are you up to, slandering my name?" Bucky slid into the tail end of the conversation.

 

"Hey, wanna come see my workshop sometime?" Tony asked.

 

Bucky smiled big and full. He wasn't just sunshine, he was the sun. "Anytime, all the time. Call me when."

 

Tony actually did call his dad about Bucky and the flying car. He couldn't help himself. "Hey, dad. It's Tony. So I'm asexual and also, did Bucky Barnes fix your flying car?"

 

"It's your mother, Howard is... well, I'm sure you can hear the noise from the mess he's making in the background. Good for you, Anthony. Be who you want. And I'll tell you now that James Barnes not only fixed that car, but redesigned the whole schematics for a certain Captain's shield. That's the reason the structural integrity is so sound. But, of course, you didn't hear it from me and your father would deny it."

 

There was a terrific crash and his father's cheering in the background. Tony couldn't even begin to guess, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

 

"Oh," He said. "Hey mom."

 

It was good to hear from her.

 

But what really kept him up at night was that shield.

 

"Hooo, Tony why're ya callin' a' this hour?" Bucky slurred, groaning at the clock. "Steve's th' one who never sleeps."

 

"Sorry. Hey, listen, did you make Steve's shield?" Tony asked, not at all concerned with the time of morning.

 

Bucky sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face, the blanket and sheets sliding down his chest to pool around his hips. "Hold on- what're ya askin' me?"

 

Tony sat for a beat, letting the old, broken dialect of a kid from the slums of New York in the 1900s settle in his ears. When Bucky was tired, he sounded like the men did at the docks that Steve used to take Tony to when he was a kid. In retrospect, maybe that's why Steve had taken Tony to the docks in the first place.

 

"Steve's shield. You re-designed it." Tony stated, slower this time.

 

Bucky chuckled and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Oh, I did a heap a' things. Suit 'e's got now, th' stealth one. My design from archives. You know, we do what we can, to keep those we love safe. Even after we're gone. It starts before you know you're gonna be gone. Starts when you were the shield, flesh and blood. And in the war, you know you'll be dead soon. Plenty of boys built like tanks around there. So you do everything you can to keep the one different thing safe. Make the biggest shield you can, out of the strongest, lightest material. Make it a battering ram. Make it big enough to cover his heart and his head. And then pass it off to Stark, 'cause Steve Rogers never took anything from you and he wouldn't have taken that, either. Dhaps and kiss. Do As Peggy Says and Keep Steve Safe." Bucky's accent smoothed out as he woke up, and then he couldn't stop speaking.

 

"You're one of a kind." Tony said after a pause.

 

"No, no. You'll get it one day. When you fall in love. For real, I mean. The type that you feel in your bones. Then you'll know I'm just the same as any man who ever lived: a fool." Bucky didn't say it in a mean way. It was just a fact. They said good night and hung up.

 

Across the hall, Steve stared at the ceiling. Bucky had been right, he was always the one that was awake at odd times. Lemon stirred at the foot of his bed and he decided he wouldn't make a snack stop in the kitchen for his jar of peanut butter. Couldn't disturb the dog, and all.

 

But things made a little more sense now. His suits never fit quite right, the armored parts never quite covering everything they needed to. Until, that is, the stealth suit came along. Now there was some attention to detail that was a cut above. Just enough pockets and just the right shade of blue-black. Except for one thing- the buckles were all configured for someone who was left handed. Steve always figured that he couldn't have it all and the small mix up was worth it.

 

But Bucky was left handed. And Bucky made that suit. It was all Steve's exceptional hearing had been able to pick up from the low conversation and it only made him want to know more. What else did you do for me that I never knew? That I'll never know?

 

  "You said you grew up afraid of men." Tony punched in the password at the key pad and held the door for Bucky.

 

  "Yeah."

 

  "So what changed?"

 

  Bucky smirked. He couldn't help himself. "Broke up the badness, I swallowed them whole."

 

  Tony threw a wrench at him. "I hate you! That is not what I wanted to know!"

 

  Bucky caught the wrench easily and twirled it between his fingers. It was almost the same size as one of his knives. He shrugged. "Sorry, couldn't help it. But also, I learned how to hit and then nobody ever touched me again."

 

  Tony gave him a tour through the stack of blue prints and the early prototypes of his robot assistants. Bucky loved it all and Tony loved that Bucky loved it.

 

  "Oh, uh. I meant to tell you. I'm glad you're. Glad. It's good that it doesn't hurt you to breath as much now." Tony swallowed.

 

  Bucky ran his tongue over a chapped bottom lip absently before raising his eyes from the blue print to lock onto Tony's. "I love you, too." He said. Tony didn't correct him. Two sort of fathers were always better than one, right?

 

  "I also meant to tell you... that day on the roof? When you said you loved Steve? I meant to tell you he loves you too. For my whole life, at least, he's loved you. And he told me so too, a little while back. Anyway, just thought maybe you'd like to know." Tony swallowed again and continued to tinker with one of his robots.

 

  "I've known Steve for a long time." Bucky offered.

 

Tony looked up. "Yeah, you know, I figured."

 

Bucky nodded, more to himself than to Tony, and they fell into silence. A small, spiteful part in Tony's heart wanted to know why he had an inventor for a father, but it was the one-armed Cold War assassin that was the first father figure to show interest in his workshop.

 

He swallowed it down.


	14. Laugh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :)

  As soon as the weather showed a hint of fall, Bucky bought Lemon a sweater.

 

  "She hates it." Steve said, arms crossed and leaning against the kitchen counter.

 

  Bucky smiled from under his eyelashes, his dimples accenting his grin. "She loves it." He insisted, giving Lemon a treat. "Good dog!" Lemon thumped her tail enthusiastically against the wood floor.

 

"Steve!" Tony complained when Bucky presented him with a sweater as well and made Tony stand next to Lemon in her matching one.

 

Steve was too busy laughing.

 

"Hey, question," Steve poked Bucky in the back of the head with a paint brush.

 

"Hey, answer." Bucky didn't look up from his book.

 

"How come all the buckles on my stealth suit are made for left handed people?"

 

Bucky frowned before slowly breaking into a smile. "No shit," He said. "Are they really?"

 

Devon, the hazel colored boy, came calling. Bucky was annoying Sam over at the VA, and so it was Steve who answered, covered in paint and without a shirt.

 

"Uh." Devon said. "Is your friend here?"

 

"No," Steve said. "Sorry."

 

"Oh, well that's okay."

 

Somehow, Steve found himself making the kid a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sitting down to lunch with him.

 

"I didn't know you painted, Mr. Captain America." Devon said, swinging his legs against the closest bar on the stool.

 

"I'm only Captain America for work." Steve explained. "So, Devon, do you do anything besides play stick ball in your free time?"

 

"Yeah, I play the violin." Devon replied casually. Steve blinked. What in the world, kids sure were unpredictable.

 

  "Huh. Well that's neat." Steve said.

 

  "Yeah. So do you work out or are you built like that 'cause of the serum?" Devon asked point blank, pointing at Steve's chest.

 

  Steve couldn't do anything but laugh. "Well, I'm not really sure. Can't say I've ever not been active. Think I should try out the lazy life and see?"

 

  Devon nodded. "Probably a good idea. And lots of ice cream too. For science. Hey is that your dog?"

 

  Bucky walked in making the racket of ten men. He either made the sound of an army or no sound at all. Steve preferred the sound. That usually meant Bucky wasn't in a murderous mood.

 

  Steve tucked the paintbrush behind his ear and stepped away from his easel that he had moved in front of the picture windows. Two of the panes on either side could swing open and both were, letting in the late summer air. Devon convinced Steve to do so. That way he could watch their stick ball game while he painted and shout out any rule violations if he saw them.

 

  Bucky was wearing Steve's aviators and his own leather flight jacket from the war.

 

  "Bucky, it's not jacket weather yet." Steve sighed. What he really wanted to say suddenly and inexplicably was I love you.

 

  "Well, Ma, I like the jacket. It makes me look cooler." Bucky replied, shrugging it off anyway and putting it on the counter along with the aviators.

 

  "Clothes aren't everything, darling, it's what's inside that counts."

 

  "Inside the clothes or inside the rib cage? 'Cause from my point of view, sweetheart, I'd certainly settle for inside the clothes." Bucky nodded at Steve's torso.

 

  "Talk to your Ma with that mouth?" Steve fired back, grabbing his shirt from the back of the couch and pushing past Bucky to get to the kitchen. Lemon trotted after him expectantly. She knew when all of her meals were.

 

  Bucky grabbed Steve's elbow and spun him around. It was something he used to do with the dames in the dancehall, his muscles remembered that. A six foot and change American Icon was close enough to that.

 

  "I dunno, you ain't my Ma."

 

  "I can button my own shirt, dumb ass." Steve said flatly. His mouth was suddenly dry. Bucky was overwhelming sometimes. Steve had forgotten about that, how Bucky used to fill up rooms even when it was only him and Steve and the old ratty couch in their first apartment.

 

  "Buttons help with my dexterity. Sam said so." Bucky replied deftly, waggling his mettle fingers.

 

  "You were an assassin for the better half of the century, I would hope your fingers could do more than stumble over buttons." Steve said dryly.

 

  Bucky quirked an eyebrow.

 

  "No, no, no, no, no. Get your goddamn filthy mind outta the gutter. I have to feed the dog. If you're not careful, you'll be the one she's eating tonight." Steve gave Bucky his best I'm not kidding look. It had been used more against Tony in the recent years, but it was adapted from the same one Bucky's own Ma used to give him on the way to Temple.

 

  Bucky bit back a smile. "Ain't this how it always went? I couldn't ever get to ya then, and I won't ever get to ya now."

 

  Steve shook Bucky's accent that sounded too much like home out of his ears and poured Lemon's food into her bowl. He added a little extra just because.

 

  "That dog's gonna get fat 'cause of you." Bucky observed.

 

  "You're fat."

 

  "This is slander." Bucky blocked Steve's path in between the island and the cabinets.

 

  Steve crossed his arms. "What the hell do you want? You're crowding me."

 

  Bucky folded down Steve's shirt collar and cupped his face. Steve was nine and having an asthma attack. He was just shy of twenty and Bucky's blood was on his face. He was a thousand trillion years old and Bucky's eyes made him ache.

 

  "What I'm trying to tell you is, I love you." Bucky said with almost no emotion, the words like chewing on glass.

 

  He was suddenly very, very close to Steve. Please don't kiss me. Steve thought. Which wasn't what he expected. But that was why he couldn't ever really date, wasn't it? Because he panicked. He was Captain America and he was afraid of everything that came with romance. The commitment, the kissing- all of it. Please don't kiss me. He thought again. Please don't, please don't, Bucky please don't.

 

  "Hey, Steven Grant Rogers. Take a breath, pal. I'm not gonna kiss you." Bucky brushed his thumbs over Steve's cheek bones. His mettle one was smooth and cool. Steve swallowed. "I said take a breath, numskull. I know you don't like that. I know you."

 

  "It's only because-" Steve's breath tumbled out of him.

 

  "Francine Tooley crowded you up against the stairwell that one night 'cause she liked the idea of you being an artist and you didn't say yes but you never said no. I told you already, I know you." Bucky took his hands away and backed up, giving Steve more room to breath. "But I'm not gonna not say it anymore, so I love you, and I've always loved you, and that's the whole of it."

 

  Lemon touched her wet nose to the back of Steve's calf and he startled so hard he put a crack in the marble counter top.

 

  Bucky laughed until he cried.


	15. Let me

  Steve knew he was going to have a building fall on him at some point, because that was just the kind of day he was having.

 

  It was only a small building, anyway. And it was really just the roof that collapsed sideways onto him. Natasha pulled him out in less than three minutes.

 

  Whatever it was that was the ammunition for the weapons of the rouge tac-team turned mercenaries took less than a minute for Steve to heal over, but it stung like hell.

 

  The whole situation was just annoying. It took longer than it should have and one too many collapsing buildings for Steve and his team to finally round the guys up. He let Bucky know that he had to stay overnight in his SHIELD apartment just in case he had an adverse reaction to the ammunition and had to be rushed in while Natasha called a pet sitter for Clint's dog for the same reason.

 

  Clint couldn't do it because he had somehow gotten a concussion without anything falling or hitting his head that Steve or the rest of the team could recall, and was passed out in the med wing.

 

  By the time he got to his apartment quarters, Steve didn't have the energy nor will power to navigate the left handed buckles of his stealth suit.

 

  Bucky wanted to know if Steve had eaten yet.

 

  No. Too tired. Steve texted back.

 

  So, of course, Bucky somehow passed clearance with his mettle arm and managed to show up at Steve's door with take out. Probably the same way that Clint got his concussion, Steve figured.

 

  Bucky put the bag on the small table and sidled up to Steve, putting his hands on his chest. Steve backpedaled clumsily. "Oh, no, Buck, I-"

 

  Bucky put his hands up. "Wasn't trying anything,"

 

  "Bucky, I would, it's just that I'm beat and-"

 

  "Come here." Bucky spoke over him. Steve paused in his stuttering. Bucky beckoned him closer. "Steve, c'mere. You gotta come to me, sweetheart, since me coming to you will only spook you more."

 

  Steve came to Bucky. "Thanks. I was saying I wasn't trying anything, I'm just gonna help you get it off, if you'll let me," Bucky looked at Steve pointedly. "So you can put a regular shirt back on." Which is exactly what happened, and Steve's heart stopped climbing in his throat.

 

  "What's your dinner?" He asked.

 

  Bucky smiled. "All peanut butter sandwich."

 

  "Oh, good. A classic." Steve wrinkled his nose. Bucky hummed in agreement, pretending not to pick up on the disgust.

 

  Steve put down his chopsticks half way through his orange chicken and looked at Bucky. The latter was sitting across from him with the chair pushed back slightly because the table wasn't really big enough for two super soldiers. He was on his second all peanut butter sandwich.

 

  "Hey, Bucky, just don't kiss me up against any walls, okay?" Steve forced himself to say. All these years later and he was still afraid.

 

  Bucky chewed and swallowed. "Got it. Please don't stare too long at my scars."

 

  "Got it." Steve echoed. "Please don't get frustrated with me."

 

  And that, that broke Bucky's sorry excuse for a heart just a little bit more. There were so many things he wanted to say, but they all sounded too shallow, too artificial. "I won't. I gotta ask the same of you. And Steve, please, please, please tell me if I need to stop."

 

  Steve chewed on a piece of chicken. "Don't worry. I got a lot better at saying no after raising a kid."

 

  Pepper blocked Tony's impulse purchase of a flame thrower. Tony called Steve to complain and Steve hung up on him. Tony gave Pepper another raise in secret and called Rhodey instead.

 

  Natasha didn't love people, per say, but she would stop killing for Clint. She would stop killing for Steve. She would think twice before killing for Maria Hill. This Sam Wilson character was someone she was slowly warming up to. She would probably kill James Barnes, but only because he was prettier than her and she didn't really know him. But he did always come to her, which was nice. He knew she could get him through SHIELD security. At least he appreciated her expertise were greater than his in some areas.

 

  Natasha stood over Bucky from where he slept on the couch.

 

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you." Steve, perpetually awake, advised softly. "He threw me through a wall the last time I did."

 

  Natasha remembered a time when she was younger. Never a little girl, but younger all the same. There was a man who was supposed to kill her. They thought he would, because he was new and unstable and unpredictable and they wanted to see if Natasha would survive. The man seemed as big as a house. He had a silver arm. He put her feet on his and taught her an American four step.

 

  "Natasha, I'm worried he'll hurt you, come on over here. He wouldn't mean to, but he's a little unpredictable when he's waking up." Steve warned, a little more urgently.

 

  "He wouldn't." Natasha shrugged.

 

  Bucky cracked open an eye and looked right at her. She wasn't startled, but it was a close call. "I might." He said roughly, before rolling over and closing his eyes again.

 

  Natasha sat on top of the blankets next to Steve and leaned into his chest. They both slept enough, but if one was awake, the other was too. The truth of it was, Natasha grew up afraid of men. But Clint and Steve and maybe Sam had let her decide if she wanted to be friends with them instead of deciding for her, so they were alright. They were okay.

 

  Clint was afraid of Natasha, but it was the same kind of fear he had for heights. It was exhilarating. It felt like home.

 

He tumbled into his apartment in Bed-stye after getting cleared and sitting through the debrief. Lucky danced happily around him and Natasha waved from on top of his table. She liked to sit cross legged on surfaces that weren't for sitting. Clint wasn't especially surprised to see her. She had a key, even though she insisted on coming through the window.

 

"Can I stay tonight?" She asked.

 

Clint looked at the dark circles under her eyes and the fading bruise on the side of her face. "You can stay every night." He said.

 

Devon wanted his violin case to be painted. He brought it to Steve, marched right through a surprised Bucky when he opened the door.

 

  "Hey, pal." Bucky heard Steve greet Devon from his office.

 

  Steve was good with kids. He would get on his knees to be at their level and put his head down close to them so they felt special. His hands were always gentle and he knew how to make them laugh.

 

  Bucky wanted to know where Steve had learned that. Maybe through trial and error with Tony. Before the war, it had been Bucky who was always good with kids. Steve lost his patience too fast and he could barely hold a conversation with anyone without starting a fight just because.

 

  Devon trotted out of the apartment with the same confidence he possessed when he entered, only this time with a night sky scene on his violin case.

 

  "Hey, how'd you learn to do that?" Bucky asked.

 

  Steve poured the dirty brush water down the kitchen sink. "Paint?"

 

  "No, talk to kids like that."

 

  Steve turned and looked Bucky dead in the eye. It was a habit he picked up from his Ma. She said when you looked people in the eye, they were more likely to take you seriously. It got Steve into more trouble than he cared to admit, because bullies didn't like to be stared down, but he never dropped it. "You."

 

  "Oh. When?" Bucky frowned.

 

  "After the war when Peggy and I came back to the states, Howard literally threw me his kid and that was the start. The first few years, I just pretended I was you and did all the things I could remember you doing and that's how come there's so much of you in Tony's life even though you only came in later on in the flesh." Steve shrugged. He had dark blue paint at his temple that was just a little bit in his hair.

 

  "He's a horrible kid. You raised him well."

 

  "Thanks a billion, James." Steve flicked his wet hands at Bucky and went back into his office. Bucky followed.

 

  "That's good." He said, pointing to a lot of lines and pencil marks. Truthfully, Bucky didn't know what it was. He never had. But he knew from what felt like years of watching the process (at least, his mind felt the familiarity) that the lines and marks were just the scaffolding and something good always came out of it.

 

  "You're full of shit. Tell me what it is." Steve put him on the spot.

 

  Bucky pursed his lips and took a wild guess. "Sam Wilson?"

 

  "Close." Steve looked impressed.

 

  "Really?" Bucky was surprised himself.

 

  Steve dropped his expression and gave Bucky a dead pan look. "No, dumbass. It's goddamn Coney Island. Get outta here and leave me in peace."

 

  "Honey, you're sweet."

 

  "Careful, maybe I'll draw you next."

 

  "I hope so, I always look good when you do."

 

  Steve ran his hands through his hair. The dark blue traveled farther back into his hair. He didn't notice, but Bucky did. Steve glanced up at him. "Have you finished?"

 

  "Is Coney Island that important?" Bucky asked, putting his head next to Steve's and trying his best to figure out what Steve saw on the paper. It was still just a bunch of stray marks to Bucky.

 

  "I do recall asking you to be patient with me not too long ago." Steve crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. Subsequently, he leaned into Bucky, too. He felt Bucky smiling against his cheek.

 

"Yeah, I know. Only teasing."


	16. Lunatic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha came back to the apartment with Steve. Bucky raised an eyebrow at her presence. He was in an old t-shirt that Sam gave him from the VA and boxer shorts. "Hello. I'm trying out friendships outside of the work place."

"Dear Steve," Steve read aloud. Bucky froze, halfway into his room and halfway in the hallway, listening to Steve's voice read his words from letters he never sent.

 

"'It's fine here, I guess. But it's not bad. Not bad like I had it in Brooklyn and it's terribly boring. War is a lot of waiting all of the time and everyone gets into a whole lot of trouble because of it. I swear half the men here will have five children for each city we pass through-' Bucky, did you have five children for every city you went through?" Steve called jovially.

 

"Where the hell did you get those?" Bucky crossed his arms and walked into the living room. Steve glanced over at him. There were a thousand letters in neat piles by the couch.

 

"They're addressed to me, so they're mine." Steve replied flippantly. He opened another one. "'Dear Steve, there's a guy in my company who swears he's an artist and I could knock his teeth out. He's horrific with a brush, I can always tell what the pictures are before he's even finished.'" Steve made a face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

 

"Half of art is the surprise." Bucky said automatically.

 

"I told you that." Steve squinted at him. "You kept complaining that you couldn't tell what I was supposed to be drawing until it was finished, so I told you that."

 

Bucky shrugged. "It's true."

 

"'Dear Steve,'" Steve continued. "'I don't think there's anyone else for me except you-'"

 

"Steve, don't read these, I-" Bucky reached over the couch for the letter in Steve's hand. Steve held it out of the way and continued.

 

"'And I know you've got the whole world at your feet now-'"

 

Bucky went around the couch and made another grab. "Steve, please-"

 

"'So I hope that this war doesn't take that away from you, and if it takes me away from-'"

 

Steve stood and danced out of Bucky's reach. "Stop, already," Bucky pleaded. Steve didn't.

 

"'And if it takes me away from you, then I suppose it'll be alright, since I'm not the only one for you. I'd rather have it that way than-' Did you really think that?" Steve asked from the top of the coffee table. Bucky stepped up next to him.

 

"Steve," Bucky began. But he got lost somewhere between Steve's eyes and the faint freckles walking themselves across the bridge of his nose.

 

Steve jumped off the coffee table and kept reading, taking advantage of Bucky's hesitation.

 

"'I'd rather have it that way than any other. When I came here, I realized I was just like everyone else. Boys built like tanks with histories of violence in their blood- you can hear it in the way they speak. Back ally bruisers. I never liked all the violence, but I was good at it, so here I am. Listen to me, you little hellion, I think I was born loving you and I'll die loving you too-'"

 

Steve landed on his back with Bucky wrestling him to the ground. They kicked and pushed for a little while, but Bucky was always better. Steve never cared about technique, because that was Bucky's thing to be smart about. As a result, the former found himself with Bucky's knee in his back and one arm twisted around. "Are you finished?" Bucky asked.

 

"I could do this all day." Steve bit back, his voice muffled against the floorboards.

 

Bucky swore at him, something about being incorrigible, and plucked the letter from his hand, getting off his back.

 

Instead of standing over Steve, Bucky rolled onto his back next to him. Steve flipped himself over and stared at the vaulted ceiling with him. "Did you do that? Did you die loving me?" Steve asked.

 

"I was a kid when I wrote that." Bucky ran his hand through his hair.

 

"Did you die loving me?" Steve asked again. Bucky rolled over to his side facing Steve and propped his head up on his hand. A smile tilted up the corners of Steve's mouth at the sight of his hair, thick and black-red-brown sticking up all over.

 

"Yeah. Every single time."

 

"Well, I couldn't have been the only one for you. Pretty words, though." Steve smiled sideways at Bucky.

 

"I have never lied to you." Bucky said. "Believe me, I tried to get over you, and the only thing it did was send me into a ravine and you into the ocean."

 

Steve hummed. "Maybe don't try that anymore, then."

 

Bucky pressed his lips softly against the smile lines at the corner of Steve's eyes. "I won't."

 

Steve pushed some of Bucky's hair back into place. He needed a haircut again. He saw it in Bucky's eyes, the ridiculous amount of gentleness, the ridiculous amount of carefulness.

 

"Commitment scares me," Steve warned.

 

"No it doesn't, you raised a kid, you love this country. Being intimate scares you." Bucky corrected.

 

Steve swallowed. "Yeah."

 

He watched Bucky shrug above him. "Okay."

 

"Okay?"

 

"Sure, okay. Whatever. I don't know, what do you want me to say?" Bucky chewed on a smile.

 

"Did you have five children for every city you went through?" Steve asked seriously, but his eyes were laughing.

 

Bucky hid is face in Steve's shirt. "Please don't start this!"

 

  Bucky's words echoed in Steve's head for a while; You raised a kid, you love this county. Being intimate scares you.

 

  Funny how Steve could believe one thing because it was an easier excuse, only for Bucky to see right through it. Plenty of people were afraid of commitment. People understood that. Mostly. Sometimes it came with job descriptions, sometimes with pasts full of baggage. But Steve had never really had a problem with commitment. Bucky was right, it was intimacy.

 

  And that was even before Francine Tooley crowded him up against the wall. Steve didn't like his bodily autonomy being compromised in any way, period. Didn't like being trapped. People died. Bucky died. Peggy died. Steve didn't like being trapped by grief. Never did.

 

  "I think I'm broken." He called Natasha at three am. Natasha looked over her shoulder to Clint's sleeping form. She had been standing on the fire escape for ages, it seemed. Fully dressed. "Yeah," She sighed. "Me too."

 

  They went for a run together at five am and a coffee stop at six. "Bucky says I'm not afraid of commitment, just intimacy." Steve flipped his aviators down and Natasha flicked her hood up.

 

  "I could kill him." She offered. She could feel the look Steve was giving her behind his sunglasses. "Only if you wanted, I mean."

 

  "What I want is to be... not like this. I loved him for my whole life, and I want to be loved so goddamn bad, but I can't fuckin' stand it at the same time." Steve's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Figures. My Ma used to say Catholics were Masochists."

 

  "Wasn't she Catholic too?"

 

  "Yeah. My own priest agreed."

 

  Natasha hummed thoughtfully and took a sip of her coffee. Interesting. "I knew him for a little bit, when I was younger. In the early seventies." They we're talking about Bucky now.

 

"Really?"

 

  "Yeah. He was supposed to kill me. Taught me an American four-step instead. He's very kind, Steve. He's very kind."

 

  Sure, okay. Whatever. I don't know, what do you want me to say? Bucky laughed, slightly mystified, in Steve's memory.

 

  Natasha took another sip of her coffee. "He was also afraid of little girls. Very strange, for such a big man."

 

  Steve smiled. "He's starstruck by strong females, and he's not so big. It's only his shoulders and the way he takes the air out of a room." He corrected.

 

  Natasha stopped by a park. Steve stood next to her and they watched a few joggers pass by, listening to the comfortable silence. "What I think is, I don't think he minds. That you're afraid of intimacy. I really don't."

 

  Steve hunched up his shoulders and burried his hands into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie before relaxing again. "Yeah, but. It's stupid."

 

  Natasha afforded him a glance. She normally made a point to refrain from looking up at those taller than her. It was too demeaning, let them meet her eyes themselves if they really dared to. "Maybe. But not when you're stupid in love."

 

  Natasha came back to the apartment with Steve. Bucky raised an eyebrow at her presence. He was in an old t-shirt that Sam gave him from the VA and boxer shorts. "Hello. I'm trying out friendships outside of the work place."

 

  "Is that what we're doing?" Steve laughed a little.

 

  "Yes. Go sit down, Barnes. I'm going to become friends with you- but first, a few questions!" Natasha strode into the living room, pushing past Bucky.

 

  Bucky opened his mouth slightly in wonder. He met Steve's eyes briefly. Steve could only shrug and shake his head.

 

  Bucky sat down.

 

  "Stop staring at me." Natasha frowned.

 

  "Sorry I just." Bucky laughed and ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up more. "Strong women, I- never mind. Hi. Hello, good morning."

 

  "Good morning." Steve replied, knowing full well it wasn't directed at him, placing a coffee mug in front of Bucky before sitting beside Natasha on the couch. Bucky flipped him off before saying thank you.

 

  "So, first question. Do you remember teaching me how to dance?" Natasha got right to the point.

 

  Bucky wet his lips and looked to Steve again. Don't look at me, pal, Steve thought. I can't tell you the answers. I don't know them. "Yeah...Yes...ma'am."

 

  "Do you have a history of alcoholism?" Natasha continued. Steve looked at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

 

  "S'okay Steve. Yeah, when I was younger. But I kicked it before I went to war. I don't think I can even get drunk anymore." Bucky shrugged. He didn't wear short sleeves a lot, even in summer. It was only to bed, because he still ran so hot, Steve noticed. But he didn't look... bad. He looked...almost good. Almost dangerously handsome, with his mettle arm and his hair in such a domestic setting.

 

  "Okay. What's your favorite color?"

 

  Bucky hesitated. He stared at his coffee cup. "The uh, um. Same color as Steve's eyes."

 

  "Okay. What's the worst thing you've done for pay?"

 

  Bucky blinked and shook his head, a smile spreading across his features as he came out of his half-asleep daze and the shock of having Natasha show up first thing in the morning. "No, I can't tell you that." He looked at Steve. "I can't tell you that."

 

Natasha put her elbows on her knees and leaned forward. Bucky wanted to say, I like the color of your nails, but he didn't. "Are you a virgin?"

 

"Natasha," Steve pinched the bridge of his nose.

 

Are you? Bucky had to bite his tongue to keep from throwing back the response. "Next question, please."

 

Now, Natasha was really just trying to make Barnes squirm. He had a good poker face, but she could make it crack. Behind her own, she was smiling.

 

"You're very handsome, Bucky. You're very kind." She threw direct compliments at him.

 

Bucky opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it, a blush creeping up his neck. He dropped his head into his hands.

 

"Natasha," Steve admonished.

 

"It's true! But also I can only be friends with someone prettier than me if I have the upper hand." She explained in Bucky's direction.

 

When she was leaving, Natasha made a move to take Bucky out by the knees. He flipped her over and pinned her between his arm and the wall. "I'm not incapable." He raised his eyebrows slightly and gave her a look.

 

Last time I did that, he threw me through a wall, Steve had said. Natasha believed it now.

 

She smiled. "Neither am I." She slipped out the door after leaving him with a kiss on the cheek. He was shorter than Steve, so it was easier to reach him.

 

"Sorry, she makes a good friend, though." Steve smiled upside down at Bucky, his head titled over the back of the couch.

 

"If I liked women," Bucky left the statement in the air.

 

"I do," Steve said. "Sometimes. Does that bother you?"

 

Bucky took up Natasha's post on the other side of the couch. "Not since Peggy." He replied truthfully. Maybe it always would, on a small, insignificant level. But it also made him feel less anxious. A back up plan, someone to always keep an eye out for Steve.

 

"Why since Peggy?"

 

"She was good to you, and she knew you before you got big." Bucky shrugged. "Plus, she was family, and I loved her because I was her family too."

 

Steve could feel Peggy watching from the picture wall. She was family and I loved her because I was her family too. There was weight in those words. Steve remembered how Peggy described Bucky after first meeting him; 'He's got a way of making one feel safe, only I'm afraid beneath the surface of that crocodile smile he's horribly like me. We'll get along splendidly.' And they did, much to the dismay and chagrin if anyone around them, which was usually Steve.

 

"Do you still smoke?" Steve asked, out of the blue.

 

"Sometimes..." Bucky didn't add the 'after sex' part, but he looked at Steve and he knew Steve knew and he laughed.

 

Steve flashed a grin at Bucky's laugh. It was almost a Pavlovian response. "Lunatic." He said.

 

Bucky didn't deny it.


	17. Leaving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re bigger now, seen shit, killed shit. But that power wasn’t yours. All you got was fear.”

  "I'm leaving for a mission tomorrow afternoon. It's looking like it's going to be a little longer, maybe a month or so. Hey, pal, you okay?"

 

  It was a funny thing, how Bucky could hear Steve speaking but he himself couldn't move. A movie stuck in the wrong freeze-frame. Like when he pulled his gun on Lemon.

 

  Sam Wilson said it was left over from the war. He didn't say if it was from the war or a result thereof, but only that the war happened and now Bucky got stuck in his own paralyzed body. It didn't happen often and it wasn't for long, but it was as if his body was a machine that suddenly locked up, trapping his voice and intentions and everything else.

 

  Steve waited until Bucky could move again. There was nothing else he could do and no real explanation behind the occasional freezing up and it made him feel so, so incredibly useless.

 

  "Sometimes you make me so anxious I could hurl." Bucky said stiffly, in part because he was forcing his voice to work and partly because it was something he had to say and also something that could hurt Steve.

 

  "I'm sorry." Steve said. And he was. "It's just how I am." And it was. Even if Bucky didn't remember, Steve had always been the source of the cold feeling Bucky got in his gut when he didn't have the 90 pound asthmatic terror in his direct line of vision.

 

  Bucky physically shrugged off his paralysis, the plates in his arm clicking in recalibration. "I'll get over it." He started moving again, past Steve and into the living room.

 

  "I hope you don't." Steve replied simply. He didn't give any explanation and Bucky was too proud to admit he needed one, so the words hung in the air until both had come to terms with Steve's first big mission since Bucky came back.

 

  With Tony, it was easier, because Steve had taken desk jobs and then gone back on full duty when he was sure Tony was ready to be almost on his own (or at least, after Steve was sure Rhodey was an acceptable substitute supervisor).

 

  With Bucky, it wasn't the same thing. He could more than fend for himself. It was just that Steve wanted to be home. He wanted to be home for Tony, too, but with Tony there was the added parental obligation.

 

  "I think Bucky's mad." Steve sighed, flicking the safety on and off and on and off incessantly in the Quinn jet. Natasha plucked the hand gun from his fingers and expertly ejected the ammunition before tossing it back into Steve's lap.

 

  "He would be if you shot your foot off." She said, tucking the loaded clip in the waistband of her sweatpants. Natasha liked to be comfortable in transport. A lady always travels in style.

 

  "No, but I think he's really mad at me." Steve repeated to anyone who would listen.

 

  "I...don't think so." Bruce wrung his hands. Flying wasn't his favorite. He was sitting along the wall of the craft opposite Steve. "What you don't understand, Steve, is that nobody likes it when you leave."

 

  "But I'm not leaving, I'm coming back." Steve said automatically.

 

  Bruce gave his trademark apologetic smile that looked like it was both apologizing for being on his face and for apologizing for apologizing for it. "We fight the stuff of legends. There's always a chance we might not come out on top."

 

  "Okay, peanut gallery," Clint interrupted. "Why don't we talk about something a little nicer? Like the pizza that's about to be waiting for us in Italy, I mean, can you even imagine?"

 

  Steve's fingers absently flipped over the envelop Bucky gave him before he walked out the door. It was a tradition they used to have in the war, before the war even. You wrote a note with something you hadn't told anyone and you gave it to the other person so that if you were gone, somebody would know. It was supposed to be opened only in the event of the person's demise, but Bucky didn't like that rule, so they changed it to after you were on your trip to wherever you were going.

 

  Back in Brooklyn, Bucky opened his. Steve was out the door. He was on a plane. That was time enough. Steve's careful handwriting covered the paper.

 

  One time we were playing baseball in the halls of the hospital in Munich waiting for Gabe to get cleared. We weren't supposed to, but we were so far away from America and we just needed something like that. I kept missing the paper ball. It wasn't because my eyes were shit, but it was because you weren't there. You were sitting by Gabe's bed and I could hear you through the wall praying something awful.

 

  I know that war took all the religion out of you. I know. I know. Nobody else could hear you, but my ears know the sound your tongue makes around Hebrew, around Yiddish, and I kept missing the ball because of it.

 

  So I sat out and put my back up against the wall and listened to you praying by Gabe's bedside. It makes me sad now. It made me sad then. You were always the sort of Jewish kid from Red hook but in Germany, you were even less than that. Your religion got all shot to pieces after my mother died, I think, but at that moment, you were a Jewish American praying at the bedside of a baptist black American.

 

  The point of this story comes down to this: I never told you I heard you praying. I never told anyone. I was afraid it was like a wish. I was afraid if I told anyone, it wouldn't come true. I was afraid that people would know that you were sort of Jewish even though you hadn't been to synagogue in years. I was afraid. I was afraid. I was afraid.

 

  You prayed by Gabe's bedside and I listened through the wall, and I was afraid.

 

  Bucky ran his hand over his jaw in thought. He didn't think his tongue could even remember the way prayers tasted. "I know that war took all the religion out of you." Bucky repeated aloud. "Got all shot to pieces after my mother died." He shook his head.

 

  Judaism is a matrimonial religion. Bucky's father wasn't Jewish, Bucky suddenly recalled. So really, his religion was shot to pieces the second he was born.

 

  Bucky wondered what it felt like, to believe in a god. To have faith. To have a community. He wondered if he ever had that. He wondered if it was the violence that looked so good on him that killed it.

 

  In a safe house in Northern Italy, Steve opened Bucky's letter.

 

  One time I stole seven oranges and sold them to the pharmacist for your medicine. Don't feel bad about it, they were from the bottom of the bin and I gave them to him half price.

 

  That was all. Steve flipped the paper over.

 

  Also, I'd do it again. Also, I was wicked before the war. Also, I love you.

 

  And that was truly all, in Bucky's easy handwriting.

 

  Steve folded the paper carefully and put it into an empty chest pocket on his stealth suit with the left-handed clasps.

 

  Natasha was standing in the doorway to his room. "What's he got to say?"

 

  "He was wicked before the war." Steve remembered.

 

  Natasha smiled. "Pretty way to describe being human. How's the dog?" They walked into the kitchen together, which was quickly turning into a weapons cleaning station.

 

  Steve did his best 'dad disapproves' frown. "No guns on the table."

 

Bucky didn't have a lot to do when Steve was around, and he had even less to do when Steve wasn't. His feet kept bringing him back to the library. He knew the staff by now. They were nice. They didn't bother him.

 

The young woman who was autistic was there sometimes, too, but inside and not on the steps. Often, they were the only two in the building besides a few stray school children.

 

"You read about a lot of different things." The young woman said, staring at the book in Bucky's hands. She kept shifting her weight from foot to foot. It made Bucky nervous, but in the newer books about autism, it said that movement helped some autistic people cope with their environments. Bucky could understand that enough. A lot of people who weren't autistic moved to cope with their environments.

 

"Gotta catch up on a lot of different things." Bucky replied.

 

"They don't have many books about you." The young woman continued. It was an interesting way to have a conversation. The topics all sort of related but the subject changes were abrupt, like the young woman was checking things she wanted to know off of a list and once she was satisfied she moved on. No extra small talk in between.

 

"No," Bucky said. "And the ones they do have aren't very accurate."

 

"How do you know if you can't remember?" She wanted to know.

 

"I have all the memories, they just don't always have context. I'm starting to put it together now." Bucky pulled down another book. This one was on Intersectional Feminism. He'd never heard of it, so figured it was worth reading.

 

"I don't understand."

 

Bucky tried to think of a metaphor that wasn't too vague. The books he read about autism said sometimes comparisons didn't stick if they were too far out on a limb. "Right now, the wind stirs up the leaves that are falling from the trees, right? That's how my head is. So each leaf is a memory, swirling around with nothing to tell me where it belongs or when it happened, just that it is. They took all the stuff inside my head and mixed up the order. It's easier to control somebody when they're too turned around to even know who they are. But it's getting more organized. It's a slow thing."

 

"Did it hurt when the memories got mixed up?"

 

Bucky swallowed. "It did."

 

"Does it hurt when you put them back in their place?"

 

"Sometimes. But I have a lot of good things in my life, so not all of my memories are some big sob story." Bucky shrugged. His arm clicked softly, the plates in his hand shifting. He opened a fist he didn't know he was making.

 

"I don't get it, you answer questions just fine." The young woman crossed her arms.

 

Bucky cocked his head slightly. "Huh?"

 

"You answer questions just fine. Why aren't the books about you better if you're easy to interview?" She stared at the glint of his metal fingers as he reached up to pull another book off the shelf. Interstellar Space Travel. Sounds fascinating.

 

"Yeah, well. Probably because nobody ever asks." Bucky shrugged.

 

  What Bucky missed, truth be told, was being reckless. Being dangerous. He couldn't help it. He was never cut out to be domestic. Steve was hot-headed and Bucky wasn't, but Bucky used to kick through walls even before the serum, even before the war.

 

  He was going to be a fire fighter, he remembered, staring over Red Hook at night from the roof. A siren wailed in the distance. The lights winked at him. He was never tall, but he was still built like a tank, and he was going to be a fire fighter and carry people out of burning buildings.

 

  Bucky flicked the ashes from his cigarette and watched them spiral down into the inky blackness where the street was below.

 

  Bucky loved wholly and he was kind, but he also messed people up. Maybe the way he was now was just waiting to happen. Dum Dum had said 'violence looks good on you'.

 

  The first time Bucky killed someone, he threw up. It was by Dead Horse Bay in '38. He was walking back to the apartment from the docks and the light was low. Bucky never saw very well in the grey light of dusk, which is why he probably didn't see the man until Bucky was close enough to see the way the knife glinted.

 

  He didn't have any money, was smart enough to wire his pay directly to the bank. No one with half a brain would walk through that area with cash money on them. Bucky always had a straight razor in his boot. The razor and the knife ended up on the ground pretty quickly, and then it was just a fist fight. Bucky was good at that. He was faster and smaller and broader.

 

  It was just two hits, but the man was down on the ground and the skin around his left eye where Bucky had nailed him looked all crushed and pulpy and wrong. It made Bucky nauseous and he spit the bile out of his mouth before taking both the knife and the razor. The conversation at the docks said the man had been killed with a bat to the face, with the force crushing his skull. They said his brain swelled and he died.

 

  Bucky sat down on an empty pallet in the back of the warehouse and stared at his hands for a very long time. He quit that job shortly after.

 

  Violence looks good on you.

 

  You were a maniac.

 

  But it wasn't like that anymore. For the first time in his life, Bucky wasn't fighting for his life. For the first time in his life, Bucky had too much free time.

 

  He went to the gym that was sympathetic to super soldiers busting bags. It was underground, the basement of a bar that used to be a bar in the '30's, too. Although now it was under a different name. Steve broke their bags all the time. The owner didn't care, so long as nobody got killed.

 

Bucky broke the bag and the chain. Little grains of sand shot to all corners of the gym. A group of young men in a boxing lesson looked over curiously when they felt the grains on their skin. The gym was open all night, and so Bucky stayed all night. He stayed until his flesh hand split to the bone and healed itself over and then he started again.

 

"You tryin' to hit all the violence outta you?" The owner asked around five am. He was an aging man, gun mettle grey mixing into black at his temples, but no less powerful. "'Cause son, that ain't gonna work. You can't kill violence with violence."

 

Bucky pauses long enough to push his hair out of his face. "Probably older than you." He grunted, leaning his full wait into a left jab. Sand started spilling from a new tear.

 

"Hmmmm, maybe so. But you're still a kid, you don't fool me." The owner replied with a knowing smile.

 

The bag exploded. Bucky reached up to stop the now unweighted hook from swinging wildly. He could see the white bone of his knuckles again. He wanted to say you don't know a thing about me, but that could have been taken as rude and Bucky didn't want to get Steve uninvited to the gym by association.

 

"There's another boy who comes in here. Another old-young one. Yellow-blond hair. You know him?" The man asked. His name tag only said Lee.

 

"Yeah," Bucky swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "That's my best friend, we grew up together. Steve Rogers."

 

"Not Captain America?"

 

"No."

 

Lee sat down on an overturned crate and shoved one in Bucky's direction. Bucky sat warily. Lee was big, even sitting down. Like Bucky and Steve put together- tall and broad and lean and solid all at the same time. Bucky grew up afraid of men. And that was the God's honest truth.

 

"You two are the youngest ones I got coming in here. Know how I know? You both throw hits like you're tryin' to survive. With Steve, it works out 'cause he blows off his anger and then he's done. But you. James Barnes, you're different, aren't ya?" Lee crossed his arms.

 

Bucky swallowed. "I dunno." He said automatically.

 

"Yeah, you are. Killing things ain't  gonna help you like it does for Steve. Can't stop killing with killing. Can't hit out violence, not when it sits so well like it does on you." Lee shook his head. Bucky kept his eyes on his hands. They were slowly healing before his eyes. He liked his lips.

 

"I like it." Bucky's voice was hollow. It was the first time he'd said it aloud. "Spent my whole life before the war making it so nobody would lay a hand on me. I don't hate the violence. I hate that I don't hate it."

 

Lee raises a finger. "Wrong. Incorrect. You hate the violence. Otherwise you wouldn't hit like you're just out to survive. What you like is the power. Was your life ever in your control?" He asked Bucky point blank. Bucky hesitated.

 

  "You're big now, seen shit, killed shit. But that power wasn't yours. All you got was fear."

 

  "Who are you?" Bucky asked.

 

  Lee stood and so Bucky stood. "Go home, James Barnes."

 

  But the thing about home was that home didn't exist for Bucky anymore. Places were always changing, their safety always being compromised. Home had blue eyes and home was mean and home was sweet and home was somewhere else.


	18. Longing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was an ache in the back of Bucky’s teeth.

  Steve slid his way through the crowd, dressed to the nines and invisible. Natasha was impressed. Even she couldn't teach a big man to be small. It was lucky, then, that Steve was a small man in a big body. They had a direct line between the two of them. They were a couple tonight, a fake engagement ring on Natasha's finger. The rest of the team was doing reconnaissance elsewhere.

 

  It was dreadfully hard to kill Steve, and even harder to trap Natasha, and so they didn't need backup.

 

  "Hello darling," She reached for him daintily and wrapped her arm around his bicep.

 

  "Hello yourself. Who's this, then?" He asked, his real-fake Irish accent flipping his consonants. Natasha turned to her new acquaintances that may be dead by the end of the mission. "Bella and her husband, Geo."

 

  Steve's chest tightened. He remembered Giovanni. The dimples. The swinging body. Steve -Bucky's voice was careful, almost a question- Don't look, pal. Steve shook off the memory and smiled a blinding smile. "So nice to meet you." He said.

 

  Bella had dark hair like Bucky. Brown-red-black and wavy. She was so very petit. Fragile, even. The diamond neckless looked liable to break her neck. She found him in an alcove, invisible because of the crowd around them. She walked her fingers up his chest. "You've been staring at me all night," She said, voice sultry.

 

  "I'm sorry. I have dreadful manners. You just remind me of somebody I know." The best lies were truths without context. Steve steered away his panic and looked down into her eyes. Christ, they were even almost the same color as Bucky's.

 

  "Before your fiancé?" Belle asked, sliding still closer. Steve stepped to the side. 

 

  "Aye." He looked straight ahead.

 

  "Dead?"

 

  Steve almost laughed, but turned it into a sigh. "Yes." Bucky had died. He just wasn't currently dead. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to check on my fiancé."

 

  In the fish market, Steve saw a boy with brown eyes and dark hair and a tragic, youthful disposition. A local girl passed and he said something snide to her in Italian. She gave him a grin for his trouble. Steve chewed on his lip and looked away. Tony was much older now and much younger all the same.

 

  "Darling," Natasha took his arm, a floral scarf covering her hair. The word said cover mission, but her tone said this is us as real people. "Are you seeing ghosts?"

 

  Steve blinked. "I won't let it interfere." He promised. She patted his arm. "You never have. But you know, they are back home, and they are not so in the grave as you see them to be."

 

  Bucky slept over in the rooms Tony kept for him in Steve in the Tower. Lemon took up residence in the tower too. He broke bags at Lee's. He walked the streets of Brooklyn at odd hours. He refereed the occasional street ball game. He took up volunteering at Battered Women's shelters. They were normally afraid of him, which he didn't mind, because so were the no-good men that sometimes crowded around the entrance. Violence sat well on his shoulders.

 

Bucky was taking the train to Tony's after bouncing at the Battered Women's shelter on Henry Street. He felt his blood threatening to boil over, so he closed his eyes. That didn't help, because the rattling of the subway reminded him of being transported in the tank, so he opened them again.

 

He stood under the guise of giving his seat up to a student who boarded, loaded down with books, even though there were plenty of seats available. It was just after dinner rush hour, and the crowd was more Bucky's speed anyway. Students and people who were chronically late and everyone else that was just outside of the 9/5 suit and briefcase regulars. They didn't make him so anxious.

 

He let his eyes unfocus for three stops. He'd have to get off at the end of the line, switch stations, and board another subway. Fourth stop in on that one and two blocks down on the left was Tony's tower. Bucky remembered when he and Steve knew where places were in relation to the stations. He remembered how the boys he played stickball with and everyone else in Brooklyn and probably New York would give you directions starting with the nearest station. Now, people just gave you an address and nothing more.

 

"'S'cuse me, young man. You wouldn't happen ta be able ta tell me what the next stop is, would ya? The map's on yer right and my eyes ain't so good no more."The older woman two seats back and to his left tapped near his foot with her cane. He catalogued everyone who boarded and got off, even though he didn't mean to anymore.

 

"Don't need the map, it's Prince Street. Next one up'll be Bleecker." Bucky tried to make his voice agreeable even though his blood was still cooling off.

 

"Could ya just check ta be sure? Ain't doubtin ya, but just ta be sure." The woman replied. Typical New Yorker. Bucky let a rueful smile drag across his face. "Sure." He traced his finger over the grimy plexiglass housing the map. "Prince Street's next stop, then it's Bleecker." He confirmed.

 

"Well consider me impressed, young man. Can never tell who's a real native anymore, so many people commin in an out." The woman nodded to herself. Bucky leaned some of his weight against one of the poles and turned toward her. The woman had a headscarf and a skirt coming below the knees with sensible shoes and a cardigan buttoned all the way down. It was getting colder, but Bucky knew the outfit, more or less. There were always Orthodox Jews about in Brooklyn and Manhattan, areas he was from and often visited, respectively. He and Steve had rented next to a Russian Orthodox Jewish family in '38.

 

He wanted to say something to her, but he didn't know what to say or even how to say it. It made him uncomfortable. It made him feel sort of Jewish and nine years old in an alleyway picking on kids too big for him and winning. I know that war took all the religion out of you, Steve's letter floated across his minds-eye.

 

  The older woman looked at him, unimpressed. "But I s'pose ya don't know old New York," She was saying.

 

  Bucky smiled again. "Oh, I do." He disagreed.

 

  The woman chuckled. "You look an awful lot like that Sergeant Barnes when you smile."

 

  "That so?" Bucky encouraged her. "What if I told ya I know Captain America on a first name basis?"

 

  "I'd say it's a nice fantasy. I just re-read an article about yer look-alike. He was Jewish." She smoothed her aging hands over her skirt, clearly enjoying the opportunity to talk to him, or anyone, for that matter.

 

  Bucky felt the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He glanced behind him and caught the eye of the student. Her Afro bounced with the rocking of the train car and he knew by the look on her face that she knew exactly who he was. He winked. Bucky was enjoying himself now, feeling that punk kid from the tenements shining through.

 

  "He was." Bucky agreed. What a thing to say. He was Jewish. I was Jewish. Was. I. I was. The woman took this to be a question and began to elaborate.

 

  "Oh, yes. Mother was Jewish, but Reform, you understand. Probably why the father wasn't Jewish. Reformers are very...free in the interpretation of the Book. Doubt that James Barnes's seen the inside of a Synagogue since he left for war. Ain't his fault, though. The Lord'll see to that, I s'pose."

 

  "It ain't his fault?" Bucky asked.

 

  The woman looked him right in the eye. "'Course not. Had to put all his faith in that Captain America in the war, didn't he? Young men like you, none of 'em's good at managing their faith. They've got to find it, first. I figure the Sergeant lost his in the war before he could find it."

 

  "Do you believe that?" Bucky asked, suddenly serious. "Can a person really loose their religion?"

 

  "If the danger to the soul is great enough, either the religion is clung to, or it's abandoned in a panic. I volunteered in the war when I was young..." The woman trailed off. Her stop came and Bucky helped steady her. She asked for his name. Just before the doors closed he called after her; "Bucky Barnes." The woman nodded slowly at then train as it began to move again, taking the young man who wasn't actually so young with it.

 

"Hey mister," It was down to just him and the student after the next stop. Bucky glanced over in acknowledgment. "Do you really go to libraries?"

 

Bucky felt cold and hot all of the sudden. Nobody knew he went to the library except for Steve and Tony and Sam. The librarians did. Did one of them sell him out? That was supposed to be his place, a place where nobody bothered him, where-

 

"Only asking 'cause I got this girl in my creative writing class who says she sees you at the library by the VA sometimes. She's nice, just real frank about things." The student continued.

 

Real frank about things. Bucky took a deep breath. So it was just the young woman at the library who he enjoyed the company of from time to time. No threat. He took another deep breath. "Yeah, I really go to the library. Are people nice to her?"

 

The student shrugged. "Mostly we all just leave each other alone. Nice to meet a human being, Mr. Barnes." She got off the subway before Bucky could say 'don't call me mister' and the car was empty. Nice to meet a human being. Teenagers were hardly human themselves, Bucky shook his head to no-one.

 

It was close to midnight by the time Bucky got back to Tony's. It would have been earlier, but he took a couple of laps around the block to case the surroundings and stamp down on his anxiety.

 

Tony was knee deep-literally- in gears, and didn't show any sign of stopping. Metallica blared in the background. "What's he doing?" Bucky asked Pepper after peeking into the workshop and coming back up to the main floor.

 

Pepper yawned. "Developing a new type of nano-bots. They're supposed to be biodegradable."

 

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

 

"Eating up the giant island of plastics and litter in the ocean. I'm headed out in a few minutes here, can you hold down the fort until tomorrow?"

 

Bucky gave her his best heartbreaker smile. "Of course."

 

At two in the morning, Bucky went down to check on Tony again. Sleep wasn't finding either of them, evidently.

 

  "You sleeping anytime soon?" Bucky asked. It was more of an order phrased as a suggestions disguised in a question. Those were Bucky's specialty. It was how he used to get Steve to listen.

 

  Tony looked up. "I don't need to."

 

  Bucky wanted until Tony's body language wasn't so focused on whatever was under his magnifying glass. That meant he was at a pausing point and nothing would be ruined if Bucky pulled his override rank that Pepper gave him and typed in the stop code on the keypad. The music stopped and everything powered down except for the lights. In the sudden quiet, Tony blinked, confused, at Bucky.

 

  "Hey," Bucky said. "It's soon and you're sleeping."

 

  Tony almost said something, but all of the sudden his bones ached and his eyes stung. He was so, so tired. He carefully stepped out of his gear pile, went over to another work table, and sat down. Then he put his head on his arms and went to sleep. "That's not what I meant." Bucky said to the room.

 

  He gathered Tony up from the stool- the kid was light, nearly alarmingly so. Did he eat? Was he eating?- and carried him to the main floor. Bucky skipped the elevator from there and went up the stairs to one of the residential floors, the same one he and Steve were on, and put Tony down in the room on the right. Tony's room had two closets, Bucky discovered. One was completely empty and smaller with good corners. The other housed his extensive wardrobe.

 

  Bucky didn't know how to feel about the fact that Tony had panic rooms, or panic closets, really, installed in his building. He decided not to think about it and took off Tony's shoes before pulling the covers up around his shoulders. Without thinking, he pressed his lips against the young man's forehead before leaving the room and hitting the lights on his way out.

 

  Bucky wandered into Steve's room next. There was a picture of Steve and Peggy with baby Tony between them on the dresser. Steve had big windows designed to let in natural light. Bucky's room didn't have big windows because Bucky was more paranoid and Tony knew that. The former sat on the bed and ran a hand over the light comforter. It was cream-colored. Bucky could only imagine how well it off-set Steve's rosy morning completion and his deep golden hair.

 

  Bucky left and made his final trek for the night. His final trek for the early morning. His own room in the tower was just as tastefully thought out. Bucky wondered if it helped with Tony's anxiety, to know that he had places for his two anchors to stay, so even if they weren't there, they had a space all the same. It certainly helped with Bucky's. It was a plan B. Another safe house. Old habits die hard.

 

  There was an ache in the back of his teeth that he hadn't felt since the first months of his capture by HYDRA. The same ache that he felt when a handler said longing. It made him miss sunshine. It made him feel helpless. It made him feel too big and too small all at the same time. It made him miss Steve. Steve with his rattling cough and clean-paper scent. With graphite all over his hands, making them shiny. Steve with height and health but with the same soul. With crass jokes at Bucky's expense and an ever present carefulness behind the mischief dancing in his blue green eyes.

 

Longing, the handlers had said. Longing, longing, longing. Made Bucky's teeth ache down to his skull until there was a pull under his skin and the sunshine boy in the hospital bed and his unrelated son who looked like Howard Stark hyperventilating in the corner of a closet. Longing.

 

  Bucky pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. He was not the Winter Soldier anymore. He wanted to cry. Longing. He wanted Steve to come home.

 

  Longing.


	19. Lurk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best type of bar tenders were ones who didn't drink. Bucky knew that because he tended a bar when he did drink and he got even more drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okie dokie so I think I fixed the spacing but I still can’t do italics anyway here’s the overdue update I’ve hand for the past couple months that I never publish

Tony threw a bouncy ball at the ceiling in increasingly greater heights from his horizontal sprawl on the couch. Bucky snatched it out of the air and inspected it. "Nice." He tossed it back to Tony.

  "I'm having a Halloween party," Tony began.

  "That sounds like a terrible idea," Bucky snorted at the same time Pepper yelled "No, you are not!" From her office.

  "Oh, shut the hell up both of you! I am too! I'm Tony Stark, I can do what I want!" Tony exclaimed, sitting up in his excitement.

  Bucky crashed into his new favorite chair and began counting on his fingers. "Uh, okay, let's just, y'know, think about this for a moment. Halloween party," One finger went down. "Halloween party with money because you're successful and why not brush shoulders with New York's elite, right?"

  "Right." Tony agreed.

  Another finger down.

  "Halloween party with New York's elite, with money, with... now help me out here, was that sugar whatever-his-name-was was snorting or...? Oh! Nope, definitely cocaine. Alright so that's Halloween party with rich kids with drugs and one more thing...alcohol! that's right. Money, drugs, drinking, peer pressure. Yeah, you know what? That sounds like a really excellent idea for you Tony. A real swell healthy situation and everything." Bucky smiled brightly.

"Oh, fuck you! I'm not having a rave with Snoop Dog! Christ, I just wanted a to throw a party with Rhodey and Pepper and maybe Taylor Swift and you and Steve and that really terrifying Russian woman or whoever else shows up, I don't know. Forget it. Jesus." Tony kicked his feet back up over the arm of the couch and resumed throwing the ball at the ceiling.

"Listen, kid, I'm just telling you what you already know about yourself." Bucky shrugged.

"Sure, but I'm not you. My father didn't hit me over the head with beer bottles, he just called me from over seas once a month. He just drew pictures with me at the kitchen table." Tony turned his head toward Bucky, working the bouncy ball over in his hands. "I'm not you, Bucky. I became my past 'cause of me, not my home life, not other people, just me. So I know now, how to know when I'm getting in over my head."

"I never said you didn't." Bucky made himself take a deep breath and unlock his jaw. That kid made him want to scream sometimes. "But that doesn't change the fact that I don't think you should be throwing the party of the year. Make it a Halloween gathering, just people you know first. Then maybe next year you can have your big party and get black out drunk. Just warn me first so when Steve gets wind of it and has a heart attack, I'll be prepared." He tried to make his tone lighter at the end.

Tony gave him a half smile for the effort. "It's still a Halloween Party, though. I'm not calling it a gathering. Makes it sound too Amish."

Bucky wrinkled his nose and laughed shortly in surprise. "'Too Amish'? Good grief. Good. Grief." 

"Plus Steve isn't even in the country and since you're invited, you can keep tabs on me." Tony continued. Bucky rolled his eyes so far back into his head he almost saw his brain.

Tony's party-gathering was still a party in Bucky's interpretation. Sure, Tony knew everyone in the crowd on a first and last name basis, but Bucky's version of 'friends' tended to mean...not over a thousand.

Still, though, there wasn't loud music and it was tastefully done. Bucky had to hand it to Pepper on that one. He weaved silently through the crowd to stand by Tony, who was dressed as a pirate. There was clear liquid in his wine glass. Bucky dipped his pinky in and tasted it.

"Hey!" Tony pulled his glass back. "It's water!"

Bucky smiled, finger still in his mouth. "Just checking." Rhodey laughed, his domino mask hiding his smile lines. "I got it from here, Mr. Barnes."

Don't call me mister, please, Bucky thought. "Don't call him mister." Tony beat him to it. "Just Bucky is fine." Bucky smoothed.

Bucky spoke to a few of the guests who's faces he recognized, trying to get rid of the de ja vu from the handful of people masquerading as him in replica quilted blue jackets and fake vintage pistols on their right hips. The costumes were slightly wrong, though. Bucky kept his pistol on his left at his thigh, and he was more apt to pull his serrated jack knife in close combat, which he kept at his hip.

There was a girl dressed as him, which he found amusing. She caught him staring and smiled, starting to make her way over to him. "And what are you supposed to be, sergeant?" She asked through her eyelashes. But her shoulders were square and back, betraying her pseudo meekness.

Bucky looked down at his chest instinctively. There was a horseshoe magnet printed on it. Tony and Bucky had cut out pictures of various baby birds and taped them around the magnet. "Chick magnet." He grinned. Steve would have hated it.

"That why you were staring at me?" The girl asked with a smile. But there was something just behind the smile that made Bucky's blood sing. Reminded him of the dance halls and girls he liked to look at that liked to kiss him. Really, the girl was a woman.

"Oh, uh. It was your costume." Bucky said flatly. The woman didn't believe him and turned so he could see the fake pistol on her hip, conveniently showing off her long legs. "Do you do a double take when you see yourself?" She asked.

Bucky knew the small talk was only a kindness. The woman probably didn't care too much. "Well, I meant- I mean- I." Fuck. Bucky bit his tongue. Come on, Barnes. Don't choke now.

"You were saying?" The woman smiled, clearly enjoying herself.

"The gun," Bucky forced himself to slow down.

The woman showed off her leg again. "Yes?"

Bucky rolled his shoulders, shrugging off whatever upper hand she had. "I mean it's on the wrong side." The woman was not expecting this and raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I'm left handed." Bucky smiled again, almost apologetically. And also, I swing for the other team, he thought.

The woman smiled back. Her eyes were kind. In Bucky's experience, most people were kind underneath. "You're a tease, Mr. Barnes." Bucky choked down a please don't call me mister and nodded once in the low lighting instead. He made himself disappear into the crowd.

The party began to have more of Tony's flare as it passed nine pm on the clock. The music changed and many of the guests changed costumes with it. Bucky counted at least twelve firemen and rabbits, whose costumes he figured were all just lingerie for sale in the costume section. Pepper wasn't worried, though. She sent Bucky to the back room to pass her more drinks as she manned the bar.

Bucky liked Pepper. She was always one step ahead. She didn't ask questions. The back room was the perfect spot to get away from the crowd. Part of Bucky, the Bucky that thrived on moonlight, got high on life in the swarm of dancing bodies and laughter and reckless grins. The other part, the one that could hit a kill shot in a hurricane, needed a break before he cased the joint.

If Steve was back and attending Tony's Halloween party-gathering, Bucky would probably have stayed out when the atmosphere changed. But Steve was overseas somewhere, so Bucky made himself useful cataloguing the alcohol.

The best type of bar tenders were ones who didn't drink. Bucky knew that because he tended a bar when he did drink and he got even more drunk. He kicked alcohol when he went to war. Before that even. He kicked it when Steve's ma died, because he knew he couldn't hold down a job as an alcoholic and he didn't want to dip into his sisters' college fund to take care of Steve and he was flat out of money by that time.

Bucky sniffed a laugh to himself. Halloween really was a night where the demons came back to haunt. He sat down on a closed crate of whiskey and picked up a book on nanotechnology. Tony, in addition to his sporadic sleep patterns, had a habit of coming up to the back room behind his bar to get a coke and leave whatever he was carrying with him in its place.

Tony only kept coke in the special addition glass bottles instead of the newer cans. That was the type Steve always had on hand, and Tony swore it tasted better. Bucky popped open a coke bottle for himself with the tip of his mettle thumb and settled in for an introduction to nanotechnology.

 

In Italy, Clint burst into Natasha's room in the safe house with Steve and Bruce in tow. Natasha opened an eye and saw flames. She jumped out of bed, ready to jump out the window too, when-

"Happy birthday to you..." The men began, slightly out of synch and each in a different key. Natasha blew out the candles. The cake was a hideous shade of traffic-cone orange and more than a little lopsided.

"Hey, Nat, remember when Clint dressed up as you for Halloween?" Bruce chewed on a smile and a piece of the surprisingly good orange marmalade cake. Natasha shut her eyes and Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. "I think we were all trying to forget that."

 

Bucky was a full chapter in when someone else came into the back room. It wasn't Pepper. He could hear the weight distribution in the steps. It was either a woman or someone of lighter weight. He looked up to see the woman from earlier round the corner. Now, she was in a yellow bikini with bumble bee wings. Bucky wanted to give her his jacket. The back room was chilled and she didn't have much on.

"I'm Tina." She said, slipping off the wings.

"Okay." Bucky ducked his head and focused on the words. Please go away, he begged silently. Please, please, please, don't make me break your heart.

"People say you don't like to be called mister, sorry about that." She walked toward him and took a seat on another closed whiskey crate. Bucky was suddenly reminded of the overturned crates at Lee's. Both conversations in both situations were uncomfortable, but he'd rather be afraid of Lee, listening to things he should already know, than talking to Tina.

"You didn't know, uh, It's just...leftover. From HYDRA." Bucky swallowed. Still resisting I see, Mister Barnes, Zola's voice clattered around his head. The technicians used to think it was funny, calling him mister. Like he was a guest in their macabre torture hotel. Christ, it really was a night of demons. Bucky blinked away the past and continued reading, hoping the woman would eventually leave.

Tina touched his knee and Bucky dropped the book like a hot coal. "You're jumpy, sergeant." Tina remarked. She kissed him soundly, the heat hitting Bucky in his chest and radiating out. Like a drug. Like alcohol. He didn't want to hurt her. He pushed her away gently with his flesh hand.

"I don't like girls...like that." Bucky tried to explain. But Jesus and Joseph, he hadn't been kissed like that in a long, long time.

"Y'ever had sex in the 21st century, Barnes?" The woman laughed, tangling her hands in his hair and putting her mouth on his again. Bucky pulled back, his head hitting against a case of fine wine.

"It can't be with you," He said, and maybe he was a little out of breath, but he was serious.

Bucky realized something, then. He liked touching. He'd always been tactile. But he'd waited for Steve and he could wait some more. Hell, maybe he wouldn't even wait at all. Maybe Steve would only ever be able to accept kisses without any expectations behind them and that was okay. Bucky didn't need to wait for something that wouldn't come to be. It was Steve's body. It was both of their hearts. Bucky already had everything he needed; Steve. And as much as his own body liked to feel, it didn't matter at all, whatever happened or didn't, as long as Steve kept letting Bucky love him.

 

Steve came back to the apartment two weeks later with new bruises and scars that would fade in three days. It was three in the morning and the apartment was empty. Even Lemon, her food, and her dog bowl were nowhere to be found. Steve showered off the grime of traveling and pulled on a T-shirt and jeans. His sneakers were by the door. He locked the apartment again and picked up take out Chinese from the 24 hour restaurant by Lee's basement gym.

Steve decided to pay Lee a visit since nobody else was there to herald his return and he figured Bucky was probably at Tony's tower with the dog.

"Ah, I know someone who will be very happy to see you." Lee greeted Steve in his gritty voice.

Steve smiled. "Yeah? You got him to speak? I'm impressed."

"Don't think he's got much sense of pain, son. You used to hit till you bled because it reminded you that you were living. That friend of yours, he splits his knuckles to the bone 'cause he don't realize it." Lee remarked.

Steve's smile turned sad. Ah, Bucky. What am I gonna do with you?

"Why the long face? You think I wasn't watching his back?" Lee asked, throwing old gloves into the charity box. "We had a few talks. He's gonna be okay. Staying up with Stark Junior."

Steve hid some bills underneath the cup of pens on the sign-in desk while Lee was preoccupied. The man insisted on no payment, but Steve considered his money donations. "Thanks, Lee."

"Sure, kid. See you around." Lee held up a hand in a still wave.

 

Steve punched in the security code at the tower's back door and crept up the stairs. Tony had always been a light sleeper, assuming he was sleeping these days. He looked into the first room on the right. Miracle of miracles, Tony was in his bed. Lemon looked up from the foot of his bed and thumped her tail once in greeting.

Tony woke up to a weight shifting his mattress. Like clockwork, strong arms hugged him into a solid chest. Tony hugged back. It was the same post-mission greeting as it had been since Tony was seven, but it didn't matter. Steve gave the best hugs, hands down. "Bucky is enforcing a bedtime. He's a tyrant." Tony mumbled into Steve'a shirt. He could feel the vibrations of Steve's low chuckle.

"Maybe 'cause you were starting to look like death warmed over, vampire." Steve replied, lowering Tony back into bed. "Go on back to sleep, I'll be here when you wake up."

"Promise?" Tony asked, eyes already closing.

"Promise." Steve promised, gently rising from the bed and tip toeing out of Tony's room.

Steve was a little more wary of going into Bucky's room. For one, Steve wouldn't put it past him to rig some sort of trap, and also he had a nasty reputation of throwing people through walls when startled out of sleep.

Steve made it in the room without being caught in a fire bomb or knifed in the chest, so he counted that as a win. Bucky slept as he always had, on his chest with both arms wedged under the pillow. In 1928, those hands probably wouldn't have been holding onto a knife or gun under said pillow, but Steve would have put money down that they did now. Even so, Bucky still slept the same. He only used to sleep on his back when he had his sisters tucked up under his arms and sprawled across his chest.

Steve slowly carded his fingers through Bucky's hair. Bucky's face twitched and he shifted. Shit, Steve thought. Please don't let that mean I'm about to have to hold you down from shooting me.

Instead, Bucky rolled onto his side and curled toward Steve, his hands coming out from under the pillow to rest by his head. Steve took Bucky's flesh hand in his own, knowing there would be no scars from split knuckles, but looking all the same. Like an infant child, Bucky's fingers closed loosely around Steve's own. It made his eyes sting.

"Steve?" Bucky mumbled, his voice scratchy with sleep. Steve tensed, but only slightly. Of course Bucky had been awake. Or close to it, at least. Otherwise Steve might have just found himself through that wall.

"Hey, Buck." Steve smoothed Bucky's hair away from his face. A small smile crawled up Bucky's face, his eyes still closed.

"I always know it's you," Bucky said, as if he were talking in his sleep. "Because of your heart beat." He opened an eye and put his mettle hand over Steve's chest.

"Sure, Bucky," Steve smiled to himself in the dark. "Of course." When he thought Bucky was asleep again, he made a move to get up. But Bucky's hand twitched when he tried to let go.

 

"Stay."

 

It was so simple. Such a simple request. "Stay." As easy as please. As easy as blue eyes. "Stay."

Steve kicked off his sneakers and nudged Bucky over. "No funny business, James Barnes."

"I'm a good catholic boy." Bucky replied. Steve had to stifle a laugh as he pulled Bucky up to his chest. The latter threw an arm across Steve's waist and curled in close. It was something a cat would do. Something Tony would do when he was in elementary school. Bucky was built too much like a brick shit house to do something like that. To enjoy being that close. But he did.

"Bucky," Steve whispered. "Bucky, you're Jewish."

"'Course I am. 'Course I was. Go to sleep..." Bucky trailed off, falling into sleep himself. Steve slept straight through until the sun actually came up for the first time since he was thawed out of ice.

  Bucky woke up with Steve in his bed, and for a second, he panicked. But then he hazily remembered Steve coming in and talking to him at some point in the night. Steve was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, hadn't even gotten undressed. Probably hadn't planned on falling asleep. Bucky untangled himself and sat up slowly. Steve was home. DAPS and DLS, to an extent. Really it was Steve coming back to Bucky and not Bucky not leaving Steve but... close enough.

Bucky kissed the corner of Steve's jaw, and then just over his cheekbone. Closed, quick, sweet kisses. No expectations. He kissed Steve's temple and the middle of his forehead. There was a long scratch at Steve's hairline. Bucky gently kissed that too, even as it faded away more before his very eyes. Steve woke up smiling. "Honey, you're sweet."

It was something Bucky said in sarcasm, most often to Peggy during the war when she said something especially cutthroat. To spite Bucky, Peggy picked up the phrase and used it in sincerity. What she didn't know was that Steve had been doing that years before Peggy did.

"Just Bucky is fine." Bucky placed a kiss over one of Steve's eyes. Steve laughed and put a hand on Bucky's forehead, gently pushing him away. "Jamie, you're sweet."

Bucky opened his mouth to say don't call me that, but he couldn't honestly say that he minded it that much, so he closed his mouth again. "Not wholly," He shook his head, Steve's hand still on his forehead. "Just sweet on you."

Steve rolled his eyes and pushed Bucky all the way down on the bed, getting out himself.

Tony was in the kitchen downstairs, eating a muffin and scrolling absently through his phone. He put it down when Steve pulled up a chair on the other side of the bar. "Hey, you know, I was thinking, it's weird having you wake up in MY house- or really, tower -since, I mean I know the apartment and the house are mine and whatever but you're the one who owns them and I own the tower so you know what it's kinda like?"

Steve blinked. "I can only imagine."

"It's kinda like I'm in charge!"

Steve laughed. "Yeah, okay. Except I'm still in charge."

"Well yeah, but I mean I could be. Technically speaking. Also technically speaking, I'm developing nanobots to get rid of the plastic island in the ocean." Tony continued, unfazed. Even though his speech was a mile a minute, Steve felt settled listening to it.

"No kidding? Hey, Tony, that's real neat. Good thinking." Steve smiled.

Tony beamed. "Thanks, I thought so too. Also, I don't know if you noticed, but Bucky got even bigger. He spent like, a lot of time at the gym you go to in that basement? Yeah, anyway, Steve, I'm surprised he didn't need to buy new clothes. You should probably have a talk with him about over exercising since, you know, you're always telling me about unhealthy coping mechanisms and most of the time you're sort of right in the end."

Steve sighed, remembering Lee telling him about Bucky's split knuckles. "Yeah, I know. We got a couple things to talk about, anyway."

Tony's brow furrowed in worry. "Like what? Is his arm okay? I can make a new one, I bet."

"I'm sure you could. No, it's. Well, we both know recovery isn't linear. I think sometimes he just doesn't register pain, or if he does, a little part of him thinks he deserves it." Steve ran a hand through his hair. "Even that really isn't anything new, to be honest. We grew up around a lotta violence, and sometimes it sticks to you and it's hard to get rid of."

Tony nodded. But Bucky was so kind. He was so, so kind. He told Steve that and it made Steve smile, and so Tony knew it was going to be alright.


	20. Listen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'd jump off of buildings and land flat footed and it was all white, all the time, so much pain I couldn't move. I've got steel rods in my bones, Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve addresses Bucky’s nonexistent pain index and Bucky addresses his horrifically small shirts. Overall a win for everyone involved. Also, Natasha hang out some at the end

  Steve scratched Lemon behind the ears. She slobbered all over his slacks and tried to climb into his lap.

  Bucky came back to the apartment to see Steve in his 'office clothes' with Lemon climbing him like a jungle gym. "You're wearing that tie like a noose, pal."

  Steve pushed Lemon off and tugged at his tie to loosen it. "That would be because it is one. Where'd you come from?"

  "Battered Women's Home. In your absence, I've become a volunteer. I may redeem my soul yet." Bucky shrugged off his bomber jacket and sat down on the other side of the couch. He patted his chest and Lemon jumped up immediately, licking his face and nosing the ticklish spot in the crook of Bucky's neck.

  "You're the reason she has bad manners." But Steve wasn't really that mad about it. He undid his tie and the first couple of buttons on his shirt for good measure. Bucky didn't answer, wrestling the large hairy animal between his body and the back of the couch. Lemon settled in and put her chin on Bucky's shoulder. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She took the chance to give him a slobbery kiss. 

  Steve wished he could keep that moment forever, Bucky horsing around with the dog. This is life. This is living.

  "Hey, question." Steve grabbed Bucky's toes through his sock. Bucky kicked him in the thigh for his trouble. "Hey, answer."

  "Can you promise me you won't get mad?"

  "Sure, why?"

  "And that you'll try not to get defensive?"

  "Well now you're making me nervous. Should I get my gun?" Bucky was only half joking and they both knew it.

  "Do you feel pain?"

  Bucky searched Steve's face for a moment. How do you answer Steve Rogers when he asks you tough questions? You tell him the prettiest lie in the world, even if he knows the truth, especially when he knows the truth. "Can I ask you a question before I answer?" He focused on things he could feel, like Lemon's fur under his hand. On things he knew, like the color of Steve's eyes.

  Steve swung his feet up on the couch so they were stacked in between Bucky's legs. This is where I am in relation to you, he was saying. I am right here next to you. I am right here. "You can ask as many as you want."

  "Are you sure you want to go there?" Bucky asked, staring right at Steve. It was an opened ended question that Steve couldn't get a read on. "What do you mean?"

  "You know I won't ever lie to you. So do you want to go down this road? Because I can't lie to you and it might break your heart." Bucky said seriously. Steve refrained from making a bad joke to relieve the heaviness of the air.

  "Do you feel pain?" Steve asked again before he could chicken out. Bucky knocked his foot against the inside of Steve's thigh. "I need a yes or no, pal. I won't be offended if it's a no, but I need an answer." Bucky had the kindest eyes.

  Steve decided that was what he liked most about Bucky. It was also how Steve knew Bucky's skirt chasing wasn't all that serious. He had always had the kindest eyes. "Just tell me the truth, please."

  "Yes or no, Steve?"

  Steve swallowed. "Yes."

  "When I was first captured, my shoulder was completely shattered. They tried to reconstruct it, but HYDRA changed hands and they decided to cut the whole thing off at that point. There wasn't any anesthesia. I actually don't have any memory of what that felt like, it's only white. Do you want me to keep going?" Bucky asked.

  "Yes." Steve said.

  "A lot of my memory is white. It's not because the pieces are missing, it's because that type of pain can stop your heart. It stopped my heart a lot. They used to...used to break my shins. With sledge hammers. See how fast they'd heal. Break 'em again. Record the progress. The first arm I had, it broke my back. The pull was too heavy on my spine, do you want me to keep going?" Bucky asked again, without breaking his narrative.

  Steve felt like he was going farther and farther down a rabbit hole. "Yes." Heads up, Alice.

  "Okay. So the pull was too heavy on my spine and it broke my back. While my bastardized serum healed that, they developed nerve blockers. They couldn't figure out how to make a lighter arm with all the fine machinery in it, so they imbedded time released nerve blockers so I couldn't feel that my back was broken. Well, that didn't work because it paralyzed me from the chest down. Do you want me to keep going?"

  "Yes."

  "Alright. They stopped that and by that time, there was a lighter arm. The strain still tore the tissue from my muscles though, and I wasn't on nerve blockers anymore. That was hell. But it was bearable. You learn to live with that type of stuff, you know? Because it's only a little over a long time. I forgot what that type of pain felt like. It was my baseline. And besides, they started fucking my head up around that time, so most of it was white. That's all white. But then I started getting used more. Because I was good. I was damn good. Do you want me to keep going?" It was almost a challenge.

  Steve unclenched his jaw. "Yes."

  "But they didn't teach me how to roll with my weight. I had to learn that myself, so I'd jump off of buildings and land flat footed and it was all white, all the time, so much pain I couldn't move. I've got steel rods in my bones, Steve. Well, they were steel. Now they're vibranium. But I had so many stress fractures that I couldn't move and they needed me to, so they splinted my skeleton. And this is what I am now. I see color instead of pain because my brain can't process it anymore. I've been in too much pain for too long and now the only way I understand it is in color." Bucky finished. Or so Steve thought.

  "Do you want me to keep going?"

  "How much more is there?"

  "I'll stop." Bucky decided. Steve didn't want to admit it, but he was relieved. It was like a sore, a scab, though. He wanted to know. Part of him wanted to know. He wanted to know Bucky's blood again, like he used to.

  "Keep going. Yes."

  "There are different kinds of pain. I process pain differently. I see the color first, always. But I put away the hurt until later, and then it comes back when my body thinks it's safe, which is usually when I'm sleeping. So sometimes I wonder how far I have to go for me to feel it immediately. If you cut me, I'll say it hurts. Of course it hurts. Color in my head is it's own type of pain. But it's not the same. Split my knuckles down to the bone and I probably won't really feel it until they're healed. I'm stopping now." Bucky cut himself off. It was the look on Steve's face, flickering between blankness and sadness and understanding.

  "There's more?" Steve asked haltingly. Bucky took his time answering. He pet the fur back from Lemon's eyes. He kissed her on the nose and smiled so sincerely his dimples showed when she kissed him back. "There's always more." Bucky replied softly, accepting another lick from Lemon. Steve couldn't understand how Bucky could say that and smile through his eyelashes at the same time. But that in itself was a lie. DAPS and don't stop loving. DAPS and don't stop living.

  "I have another question," Steve said. Bucky looked at Lemon, still wedged happily in the crook of his arm. "Should we answer him," He stage whispered. "Or should we pretend we're deaf?" Steve pressed his heel against the outside of Bucky's thigh. "No need to get violent," Bucky swung his eyes up to meet Steve's.

  "If I asked you to kiss me right now, would you do it?" Sometimes, Steve was afraid he'd choke on his own heart. His voice sounded steady, though, just like he'd rehearsed it in his head. Bucky tilted his head to the side, squinting his eyes slightly. "Are you asking?"

  "Yeah,"

  "Gimme your hand." Bucky reached out with his right hand, his left arm wedged between Lemon and the back of the couch.

  "Why?" Steve leaned forward anyway.

  "'Cause I'm askin so nicely. S'cuse me sweetheart," Bucky apologized to Lemon as he shifted her from her cozy position so he could sit up and reach Steve. Bucky took Steve's outstretched hand and kissed him between his knuckles like something out of a Shakespeare play Steve never read in the first place.

  Bucky flipped Steve's hand over and kissed his wrist through the sleeve of his dress shirt that looked like it was as uncomfortable to wear as a scratchy wool blanket with the way it sat on Steve's shoulders. "We gotta find you a shirt that fits, pal," Bucky shook his head, getting his knees under him so he could lean forward more. Lemon jumped off the couch and relocated to the chair.

  "This fits," Steve argued.

  "You wouldn't even know," Bucky kissed Steve's shoulder. "Since nobody ever bothered to fit anything for you except your dress uniforms and your field suits."

  Steve snorted. "Field suits only fit 'cause you made 'em."

  Bucky paused and pulled back. "Who told you that?"

  "I'm not stupid, Bucky. Plus my stealth suit's buckles are all on the left side, which I've only told you about a thousand times." Steve rolled his eyes.

  Bucky kissed his eyebrow. "That was on purpose. You were being a little shit the week I gave Howard the design."

  Steve laughed, big and low. "I'm always being a little shit."

  Bucky kissed Steve's ear and the corners of his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Steve kept waiting for the panic that never came. See, pal, Bucky was saying in his closed mouth kisses, just like your body language said on the couch, there's no threat. This is me and you've known me your whole life. I am here and you are here and we are safe in this space, in this apartment, on this couch.

  "How am I supposed to know if a shirt fits or not? They're all uncomfortable." Steve complained.

  Didn't your Pa ever- Bucky almost said, but he stopped that in his head before it came out of his mouth. Of course Steve's Pa didn't ever anything because he was dead in the first war. It was Bucky who taught him how to tie a tie, how to shave with a straight razor, how to ride a bike. Steve's Ma taught him and Bucky the rest, like how to change a light bulb and sharpen a knife and hang a picture straight.

  "I'll know, I'll come with you. It's just sizing, gotta make sure it fits you in the shoulders." Bucky replied instead, kissing Steve's left temple. It sounded nice when Bucky said it. It sounded easy. But it wasn't. Steve couldn't stand shopping for dress clothes.

  Steve knew his sizing in regular clothes, what Tony lovingly called 'dad-chic'. Rhodey said it was in-style lumberjack who gets things done and drinks tea. Both of those were accurate, Steve would admit. But since going back to SHIELD, the meetings with bigwigs who weren't on his immediate team required formal wear. And Steve could respect that, he really could, it was just that nothing in the business section fit his attitude or his body or anything in between.

  "Bucky," Steve pushed at Bucky's chest. Bucky was out of Steve's space in the blink of an eye. "Sorry, I'll stop. I'm sorry." He apologized. Which was a first for Steve. No 'I thought you liked it' 'I thought...'

  "No," Steve smiled. "I mean, thanks, good reaction, but that's not what I- My arm was just falling asleep."

  Bucky raised his eyebrows. "It's the shirt." He insisted. "You're gonna have to get your arm amputated, it's the only way." 

  Steve unbuttoned his dress shirt. "No it ain't, don't be such a drama queen." He stripped to his undershirt, finally able to move his shoulders fully. "See? No amputations."

  "One," Bucky wiggled the fingers on his left hand. "But that was only 'cause I fell off a goddamn train."

  "Yeah," Steve said, framing Bucky's face with his hands. "Better not do that again, idiot." He kissed Bucky's smile before it could form all the way. That was Steve's second favorite part of Bucky, right behind the kindness in his eyes.

  Bucky leaned in on instinct, but he kept his moth closed, he kept the pressure light. Steve pulled away. "Don't push in on me, please, you're bigger and I can't. I don't. I'll get trapped." It didn't make as much sense as the idea Steve was trying to convey, but Bucky understood. Just don't kiss me up against any walls, Steve had said.

  Bucky was afraid of men like Lee, even though he could and had killed thousands like him. It was because they were taller and they took up rooms with their personality and also because Bucky just plain grew up afraid of men.

  Steve was afraid of intimacy as a rule. But it was mostly okay if he initiated it. It was just that he panicked when he felt closed in. Realistically, Steve had been in much more compromising positions with enemies and gotten out just fine, but his head still screamed when he got closed in.

  If Sam Wilson had the time and desire to psychoanalyze it, he'd say both of them had to do with power. Bucky had power used against him by bigger men up to and including his run in with HYDRA and he didn't ever want to not have the upper hand again. Steve was still, after all these years, trying to find his own power. It was his body.

  When Steve was smaller, he felt like he had power because his body was his. After, his body always seemed to belong to other people. It was better after Tony, because Steve had a title other than Captain America who basically belonged to the government. He was Tony's not-dad who held down the fort, and it turned out he was made for hugging just the same as he was made to walk through a wall.

  That's what Sam Wilson would have said, and he would have been correct.

  "Steve, that's just how I kiss." Bucky chuckled, but not unkindly. He tugged on Steve's shirt and fell backward, taking him with him. Steve put out his arms so he didn't fall entirely onto Bucky. "But this'll help. Your lead. You wanna stop, then stop, got it?"

  Steve didn't answer. He was too busy trying to think of a time when Bucky's hair was ever behaving and if so, if it made him look better or worse. Steve's bet was worse. "Hey," Bucky tapped Steve's forearm. "Can you repeat what I just said?"

  "Sorry," Steve grinned. "My ears are shit."

  "You know as well as I do that the serum fixed all that. I said it's your lead, stop whenever, no harm done." Bucky repeated.

  "Bucky I told you, I got a lot better at saying no after raising a kid." Steve ducked his head and kissed Bucky again. It was better, with Bucky under him. Steve was taller, but Bucky was stronger. They were probably about evenly matched in reality, but in a brute strength test, Steve had no doubt that Bucky would win by a mile, or at least several yards.

  Bucky ran his hands over Steve's shoulders and his neck and through his hair. Bucky's hands felt good, they felt safe. Steve covered Bucky's face with kisses of his own. His nose, his cheek, the dimple in his chin, the silvery scar just above his ear that must have been so deep his back ally super serum couldn't heal the skin clean. Bucky's five o'clock shadow tickled Steve's lips.

  It was easy to kiss Bucky. No awkward bumps of foreheads and noses. They knew each other too well for that, Steve knew where Bucky's body was in space with his eyes closed.

  The icing on the cake was the lack of expectation. Bucky kept his promises. When Steve was done, they were done, and then Steve draped his frame over Bucky's for a little while. "Do your feet hang off the edge?" Bucky asked, absently working out a knot in Steve's shoulder. Sitting in a board meeting with a carefully crafted respectfully indifferent expression could build up a lot of tension in a body.

  "My feet hang off of everything." Steve wiggled his toes. Bucky wasn't surprised. He remembered, wistfully, when he used to be taller than Steve. It was okay, though, he could still probably win in close combat. If he had to.

 

  Natasha ended up coming with them to find dress shirts that fit Steve. This was because she had bought him the only one that actually fit as a Christmas present and also because it was a Saturday and Clint wasn't around and she needed something else to do.

  "Hello, beautiful." She greeted Bucky. "Hello." Steve responded for him.

  "I'm a small." Steve insisted. "Bull shit." Bucky flicked through a rack of shirts and held one up to Steve's chest. "This is a small, it barely comes to your shoulders. This is a medium," Bucky held up another one. "This is your size."

  "It'll be too big, though. I swear I'm a small." Steve took the medium from Bucky anyway.

  "It won't be, which you'll see when you try it on, because you should always try it on. You're a small in some things, Steve, and that's only because half of America is obese and the sizes are all down one to make everyone feel better. Here, this one is nice too."

  Natasha had to stifle a laugh. This was better than reality television. Who knew it would only take an acclaimed, brainwashed assassin to address the crisis of Steve's work wear.

  "Why are you giving me a large when you just said I'm a medium?" Steve made a face at the French blue shirt in his hand.

  "Because some brands run small and some run big. Go try those on." Bucky replied, shutting down any further rebuttal. 

  Bucky and Natasha sat on the u-shaped couch outside of the dressing room. "I always thought incorrect shirt sizing was a depression era thing." She said, attempting to make small talk.

  "I think it's just a Steve thing." Bucky replied. He appreciated the effort. Neither of them were overly social by nature. Or, at least not anymore.

  "Like how he doesn't like it when people put their feet up on coffee tables?" Natasha asked. Bucky's smile was immediate and so, so worth it. "Yes," He agreed. "Very much like that."

Natasha brushed her fingers lightly through Bucky's hair and he flinched, shying away in reflex. She laughed to herself. Little boy in a man's body, what are we going to do with you? "Sorry," He said. "I'm sorry."

Natasha telegraphed her movements and put her hand on his knee. "If you ever apologize again for reacting the way you were conditioned, I will-"

Her threat was cut short by Steve showing off the first shirt. Bucky made him move his arms, to which Steve snarked that it was a board meeting, not a circus. "Coulda fooled me," Bucky replied before sending Steve back to try another shirt on.

"You're important to Steve, so you're important to me." Natasha turned to Bucky. Bucky stared straight ahead and felt subtly up his left thigh for a knife, a gun, anything familiar. Natasha knew exactly what he was doing and grabbed his hand, holding it in hers. "Listen. Listen."

Bucky swallowed. "I always do."

"Why are you afraid of women, James Barnes?"

Bucky choked on his own fear, couldn't swallow down the truth. "'Cause the first handler was a woman and you can't hit a woman and I killed a little boy for her and I couldn't say no and I've never been able to say no, not to my Ma, not to my sisters, not to the girls at the dance hall who liked to kiss me so I let 'em. But you can't hit a girl, you can't hurt them, and strong women always knocked me sideways. I killed the male handler, but I couldn't kill her."

 

In the end, Steve left with four correctly fitted dress shirts.

 

 


	21. Layers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was blood in his mouth, running out of his nose. Reality kept slipping like a bad tilt-a-whirl.

Steve didn't wear a helmet when he rode his motorcycle. He liked to feel the wind dragging fingers through his hair and it was too hard for him to die from a head injury.

More simply put, Steve was an adrenaline junkie.

He was a good pseudo-dad and an excellent leader, but he was also in his mid twenties a hundred years later in the twentieth century with all kinds of nice, new, and dangerous things for him to engage in.

Steve did not feel any sort of satisfaction from his current adrenaline spike, however. He just felt anxious and irritable and impatient. A stray dog only wanting to lick at its wounds while passer-byers stopped to stare.

There was a ringing in his ears and he couldn't quite make out what exactly was in front of him. Stray bits of conversation flittered by, but they were old. Old, old, old in a way that he knew they were memories. Flashes of color- Peggy's red dress, Dum-Dum's laugh. "Fuck." He said.

"Steve?" Natasha's voice came through on the comms. Bucky before his voice broke echoed his name with the same worried inflection and the ground in front of Steve flickered into a familiar alleyway. He sank to one knee, trying to shrug off the vertigo, pitching forward and catching himself on steepled fingers.

"Fuck," Steve said again. He could feel his pulse skyrocketing. "I'm out, I'm out, something- I don't- please...stop..." He panted. Alice danced by in one of Bucky's shirts, the hem coming to her knees. Her giggle echoed behind his eyes, lingering even as she faded and reality flickered back in.

Steve was in the center of a red-energy storm. The eye of the hurricane. Somehow, he'd made it close to the girl. Because she really was just a girl, now that he could see her up close. A girl who was scared and powerful and young and sifting through his memories. She met his eyes and looked startled.

Steve reached out with one hand. "I just want to help,"

"I just want to help," Bucky, surrounded by bills. Half of them from the hospital visits belonging to Steve and the rest for the lights and the rent. Steve's ma placed a hand on Bucky's cheek. "Baby," She smiled patiently. "You already do." Steve swallowed a cough and crept back to the bed, the flush of the fever combining with the weight of hearing something he shouldn't have crushing his chest even more.

Tony, looking up at him with silent brown eyes framed by dark eyelashes. Peggy stood at his shoulder. "Don't you let that boy slip through the cracks." Steve looked down at the tiny boy in his arms. How could something so small possibly survive? It should have been Bucky. Bucky, who was good with kids. Bucky, who put all his sisters through college. Bucky, who was gone. "I'm gonna love you." Steve whispered the promise into the baby's full head of hair. "Even if I get it wrong sometimes, I'm gonna do my level best."

Tony with crooked, newly self cut hair and missing teeth. "You get me better clothes than my dada." Admiring himself in the mirror, the dinosaur on his T-shirt standing out. They were clothes a child could move in. Not business suits scaled down. "I wanna stay here wif you an' eat kid food." He hung onto Steve'a leg like a cat and Steve could have cried. Chicken nuggets and macaroni (but you better eat those green beans, kid. You're small enough as it is).

Tony at seven with bags under his eyes, running his little hands obsessively through his hair. Don't you let that boy slip through the cracks. "Hey, you know you can always stay here. If. If staying in an empty house with a nanny makes you anxious, you've always got a space here." Steve said carefully. He didn't mean to love Tony that much. He didn't mean to. But he did anyway. "Yeah, okay." There wasn't a delay at all.

"I'm a fuck-up," Tony at fifteen hiccuped into his hands. "I can't fuckin stop cause it feels so good and I know it's not but I c-can't and I n-need, I need- please help, please help, somebody please help," Steve found him rocking in the corner of his closet and so he did the only thing he knew: he got in the closet too.

Steve pressed Tony into his chest so he could hear Steve's heart beat. "I love you," He promised. "I love you, always. I loved you when you were little and I love you now and I'll always love you. I don't love the drugs but I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you," And maybe they were both crying.

Tony disappeared from Steve's arms, but the tears were thick in his throat. Fuck. The girl was crying. Steve reached out again. He took her hand. They both watched in slow motion as all that red energy shot through his body and pooled in his chest.

For a moment, Steve had a brother with white hair. This brother was fast and irritating but he was all Steve had left and he loved him fiercely. Steve was scared. Steve had the Captain of America holding onto his hand. And why should I let you live? Who in the world do you love?

Steve gritted his teeth and ripped his cowl off. It bounced into the red-energy storm, got caught up in the vortex and swirled away. "I got a kid, and he's savin' the world, but somebody's gotta remind him to eat," He hissed. Reality slipped sideways.

Hey, Buck, lemme introduce you to this real swell girl. Her name's Peggy. She'll hate you.

Steve snapped back into consciousness flat on his back, staring up at a boy with white hair, who had joined the girl. "Is he good?" The boy asked. The girl looked down at him. "Are you good?"

Peggy held his hand, a colorful scarf covering her bald head. The chemo made her skin sallow, but her hands were still strong. That red lipstick matching her nails stayed. "You know why I never said yes to marrying you? It's because you're too good, Steven Rogers. You're absolutely made of too much quiet sunshine and righteousness to be tied down when I go to hell, so do me a favor and DAPS. Don't stop loving, dear. You mustn't ever stop."

The girl was kneeling beside him now, tears making silver paths down her cheeks in twin rivers. "I'm so sorry," She whispered. Steve faintly registered that she had an accent. Maybe Eastern European? It was hard to tell. There was blood in his mouth, running out of his nose. Reality kept slipping like a bad tilt-a-whirl. "Don't be," He managed to say. "I'm glad I got to know her. I'm glad I got to love her."

The girl shook her head. "You don't understand, please help me, please help us, I'm sorry!"

Steve rolled to his chest and pushed himself up on unsteady feet. He stumbled sideways. "This... is not good." The world went black and Bucky's mettle arm glinted in the darkness and Steve fell into nothingness.

 

He woke up with a start and somebody stronger muscling him down. Steve lashed out on instinct. "Shit, Steve, quit it!" Steve kept pushing. He was trapped, cornered, crushed, still sore and confused and was this a memory or reality and where was he and he couldn't breath and-

"Holy- Still a scrapper, Jesus Christ, calm down, I got you, I got you," The voice was familiar but Steve couldn't move and- "Hey! Hey!" Whoever it was gave him a sound shake at the shoulders.

Some sort of alarm went off. It sounded like a heart rate monitor warning. A heart rate- wait, was he in a hospital?

"Don't shake the patient, he's in a fragile state, sir, I'm going to have to ask you to-"

"Fuck off. Hey," A forehead against Steve's. Firm hands on his wrists, keeping his arms crossed in front of his chest, but one of them didn't feel like skin. It felt like mettle. Bucky. "Hey, it's okay. It's alright. I got you, don't you hear me? I'm right here, I got you. I got you."

"Bucky?" Steve's voice was breathless and high and panicked. "I can't see. I can't see. Shit. I don't even know where I am. What happened? Where- I can't. I can't see!"

"Yes you can, Steve. Just take a couple deep breaths. You're only freaking out a little, no big deal. Keep on breathing till you see again."

"I still can't see."

"Give it a minute. I need you to keep breathing. Just breathe with me for a little bit, okay?"

"Okay."

Steve breathed with Bucky until the dark spots faded from his vision and it was only when the light hit his eyes and shapes started to take focus that he realized he'd had them wide open the entire time. He blinked.

"Why are you holding me down?" Steve asked when he could see again. Bucky eased up, but he still kept some of his weight against Steve. "'Cause I know what it's like. Waking up after your head's been screwed with." Bucky replied quietly.

  "There was this girl, Buck, and everything kept slipping sideways. I got so confused." Bucky pulled Steve to his chest, blocking the lights and the whiteness of the hospital with his body. "Ah, sweetheart, I'm so sorry." He whispered. A sliver of affection that they could afford, seeing as nobody but them had ears good enough to pick up Bucky's faint whisper.

  "That's what the girl said, and I couldn't help her. She was asking for help in the end, I think." Steve closed his eyes as reality started to slip again.

  "You always had a goddamn bleeding heart, Steve. When are you gonna learn that some people are just plain bad?" Bucky asked to no one, his voice anchoring Steve.

  "It's you who has the bleeding heart and you know it. She wasn't bad, Bucky. She was just scared." Steve wanted to add 'like Tony was', 'like you were', 'like everyone'. But he didn't. He didn't have to. Bucky knew the subtext.

  Natasha jolted out of her past-induced coma in the bed next to Steve and brought the scene into context. Steve watched Clint do the same thing Bucky had done to him. Bruce was sipping on orange juice, sitting cross legged on a made medical bed with military corners. The beds were in a circle facing each other, so that everyone could see each other.

  Sam was passed out on the bed next to Bruce. "Did he-" Steve's throat tried to close in on itself. Bucky shook him lightly again.

  "Nope." Bruce answered the half-question. "He's just taking a nap. It was you and Natasha that got zapped. Guess they knew enough to take out the strongest links first."

  Or the ones with the most complex pasts, Steve thought. Natasha was still thrashing, but not as violently, and it wasn't English that she was throwing at Clint. Bucky made Steve lie back down and draped his bomber jacket over him. He made it look like a half-hazard throw, but Steve knew better than that. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be back."

 

  They were keeping the boy and the girl in glass observation cells. The boy's image kept blurring. The girl sat in the corner of her cell, her hair long and lank, covering most of her face. Oh darling, Bucky thought, you're a monster just like me. The HYDRA brand on the inside of her wrist said as much. They had tried to do the same thing to Bucky, but his skin kept healing smooth.

  He walked around to her corner and crouch down. "Do you speak English?" There was no response, so he tried again in Russian. Then in Italian. Then in Romanian. She looked up, looked down, looked back just as quickly.

  "English is fine." Her eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot. "I've already been interrogated."

  "I don't work for SHIELD."

  "Bucky, give the kid a rest. You know better than anyone what HYDRA does." Steve called across the room.

  Bucky turned, frustrated. "I'm the one with the bleeding heart, ain't I? Get back into bed before I put you back myself!"

  The girl sat up suddenly and slammed her hands flat against the glass. Bucky startled and rocked backwards, sitting down in surprise. "You grew up alive!" She exclaimed.

  Bucky Barnes afforded a laugh. "That's...sure."

  The girl stared at him like she was memorizing his face. "I saw you, in his head," She pointed past Bucky in Steve'a direction. "You helped him. And he helped the little boy with brown eyes. Has he grown up alive?"

  Bucky took his time answering. His purpose had been to figure out the extent of the damage that was done to Steve's head. Now, he was getting the impression that the girl had gone through the memories rather than rearranging them. "Yeah, he grew up alive."

  "Then will you help me? Me and my brother, we want to grow up alive too." The girl looked at him with owl wide eyes and Bucky, his heart bled. He sighed.

  "Do you understand what you did? You hurt two people I care about very deeply. This isn't HYDRA anymore. You're out of that already if you're here and still alive."

  The boy blurred into focus for a moment. "Why should we believe you?" 

  Bucky stood. "No reason at all." He walked across the room to Steve and took his arm. "C'mon pal. You need a goddamn brain scan." He walked him out of the room, the girl's calls of 'wait' grating on his soul every step of the way.

 


	22. Leather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The man took out his own flask and took a long sip before pouring the rest over Peggy's grave himself. "Do us all a favor, James. Live the life we couldn't back then."

Bucky ran his thumb over the inscription burned into the collar of his bomber jacket. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil- for I am the evilest motherfucker of the valley

  It was a play on a religious verse. He remembered how shocked he'd been hearing God all the way out just like that, not G-d or any other variation. His mother raised him Jewish. He was maybe eight years old- right before he met Steve. Bucky said it outright after that. Steve was right, his religion was all shot to pieces. It was just that the pieces had been taken out little by little as he grew up and then it was gone and he lost it. Bucky ran his thumb over those burnt-leather words again. He didn't know why it bothered him so much, the Judaism.

  It wasn't so much the fact that he was Jewish. Had been Jewish. It was that he wasn't anymore. That he sort of still was in his heart, but he really wasn't. Wasn't ever. He'd chaperoned the dances at the Catholic Church that the entire neighborhood went to, for chrissakes. It bothered him. It felt like something that should have been his to keep, but he never learned how to hold onto it. It was a little bit like Steve, only Bucky knew how to hold onto him now after all- with both hands. Tightly. Maybe even sometimes a leg.

  "I am the evilest motha fucka in the valley." Bucky whispered to himself, some of old Brooklyn creeping into his accent. It was true, too. That statement. He shrugged on the jacket and stepped into the crisp November air with Lemon on the other end of the leash.

  "Hey Mister Sergeant Sir," Bucky looked reflexively to the street where the stick ball boys always seemed to gravitate, but no one was there. It was eight am on a Tuesday morning. "Up here!" The voice called. Bucky followed it to see a hand sticking out of an upper story window, waving down at him.

  "Shouldn't you be at school?" He called back, holding up a hand in acknowledgment.

  "Yeah, but I'm sick." And boy did that statement bring back memories. Steve, sick all the time. All the time. It wasn't just the asthma, it was the anemia. The pound of raw liver he had to choke down every morning. The chest pains. Chronically ill little punk.

  "Well close the goddamn window and get back to bed, pal!" Bucky replied.

  The kid stuck his head out the window and for a moment, Bucky was seeing double. Light hair, dark circles, pale skin. But the hair was longer and darker, more brown than blond, and he wasn't so stickly thin as Steve had been. A smile spilt the kids face, preceding his "Yes sir," before he pulled his head back in and shut the window.

  Lemon whined in inquiry. Bucky glances down at her. "Yeah, I know, we're going." He started walking again. They walked into the commercial district and passed by a school building. Bucky knew by the faint movement behind the tinted windows that the kids were happily distracted from their lessons to watch Lemon trot past.

  Peggy died in America, and so that is where she was buried. In the namesake of a man who had loved her dearly. The only place she'd ever put down roots. Bucky read the inscription on her tomb stone. "A Lady of Liberty."

  "How's our Lady doing today, huh?" Bucky crouched down. He could imagine her voice, slyly saying "One step closer and you'd be standing right on my breasts."

  Lemon sat down next to him and pawed at the earth. Bucky took out a flask from the inside pocket of his bomber jacket. "This one's to you, sweetheart." He poured the amber liquid over her grave, watching as it seeped into the earth. Few people could outdrink James Barnes. Even after he quit drinking himself stupid, his alcohol tolerance remained. Margret Carter never failed to drink him under the table.

  "Excuse me, young man," Bucky looked up. An older man in a jacket much like his leaning heavily on a cane met his gaze. "That's an awfully old tradition, pouring alcohol over graves."

Bucky stood and ran his hands through his hair. "Not so young as I look, mister." He smiled softly. It was times like these that he wished he had a few wrinkles. Maybe a grey hair or two. Just to say 'I've been there', 'I lived then' without the arm and the trauma.

"Ho-ly shit." The man drew it out. "Guess you ain't, Sergeant. Guess that jacket's yours and not your graddaddy's too, huh?" The man hobbled over to stand by him and regard Peggy's grave stone. Lemon nosed against his trouser leg and he set his free hand on her head.

Bucky fingered the leather lapels. "No, sir. Gambled it off a fly boy back when things were simple."

To this, the man laughed. It was deep in his chest and gravely with time. "Bullshit. The war was messy as the peace is now. Times are never simple, it's just what we get used to. Handsome dog you have here, she a service animal? I only ask 'cause I know I can't be petting them."

Bucky shook his head. "No, and she's not really mine. Belongs to Steve Rogers, officially. Her name is Lemon. She's a great dog, though."

"That's good." The man praised Bucky. Bucky looked over in question. "That's good, Steve Rogers. Not Captain America. I grew up in the Big City around the time he was coughing a lung up in Brooklyn."

Bucky snorted. "Jesus, it's the truth."

"But we would be about the same age, all of us. Fought over in the pacific theater, I did. Not for very long though. I was a pilot, so they pulled me over to Britain real quick when everything started going to shit. Anyway, we heard about you, and I mean you, too. Not just Rogers. A million years later and my grandson's got your pictures in his history book. What a helluva thing, to be history."

The man took out his own flask and took a long sip before pouring the rest over Peggy's grave himself. "Do us all a favor, James. Live the life we couldn't back then."

Bucky nodded. "Yessir."


End file.
